SALESMANSHIP 


SALESMANSHIP 


BY 


WILLIAM  MAXWELL 

Author  of11  If  I  were  Twenty-One"  and  "  The  Training  of  a 
Salesman  * ' 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
($&e  fttontfibe  $retf$  Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,   igij  AND   1914,  BY  P.   F.   COLLIER   ft    SON,  INCOR. 
COPYRIGHT,   1914,   BY  WILLIAM   MAXWELL 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  September  1914 


CONTENTS 

I.  RULE-OF-THUMB  SCIENCE    .     .     .     .     «       i 

II.    OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 46 

III.  "ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY  ? "  .     .     .     .     74 

IV.  JUST  LOOKING 100 

V.  BUYING 130 

VI.  GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 159 

VII.  CREDIT-MAKING 191 

VIII.  THE  MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN  210 


These  papers  made  their  first  appearance  in  Collier's  Weekly t 
but  have  since  been  revised. 


435953 


SALESMANSHIP 


RULE-OF-THUMB   SCIENCE 

IF  one  average  man,  fifty  years  old,  could 
and  would  tell  the  truth  about  himself,  we 
should  have  a  priceless  textbook  on  life. 

The  other  day  I  sat  beside  a  man  in  the  li- 
brary car  of  a  twenty-hour  New  York  to  Chi- 
cago railway  train.  Faintly,  like  the  outline 
of  year-old  furrows  in  a  fallow  field,  there  lay 
upon  his  face  the  traces  of  a  fast-lived  youth. 
Discretion  had  checked  and  right  living  in 
part  repaid  youth's  borrowings  from  old  age. 
He  had  funded  and  underwritten  the  debt  of 
his  youth.  He  held  the  shares  himself  and  was 
paying  to  himself  a  yearly  dividend  upon  a 
capitalized  deficit  of  wasted  brain  and  body. 

If  this  man  told  the  whole  truth  about  him- 
self, it  would  be  a  story  worth  hearing,  for  it 
would  convert  to  the  convincing  coin  of  experi- 
ence that  vague  debt  to  self  and  society  which 


SALESMANSHIP 

our  elders  seek  to  define  by  general  and  im- 
personal precept. 

Convince  this  man  of  the  real  value  to 
others  of  his  experience  and  I  have  little  doubt 
that  he  would  attempt  a  true  narrative  of  it. 
He  is  fine  enough  for  that.  But  I  am  sure  he 
could  not  tell  the  real  truth  about  himself. 
When  a  man  talks  about  himself  he  is  unfail- 
ingly disingenuous.  As  the  race-track  dope- 
sters  would  say,  you  have  to  "throw  out" 
what  a  man  says  about  himself.  A  man's  re- 
cital of  his  own  experiences  may  be  entertain- 
ing or  amusing,  but  is  rarely,  if  ever,  a  trust- 
worthy guide  for  others'  conduct  —  except 
when  the  narrative  departs  from  the  narra- 
tor's portrayal  of  himself  and  touches  upon 
his  observation  and  estimate  of  events  which 
were  wholly  beyond  the  real  or  imagined  influ- 
ence of  his  own  acts. 

This  is  a  rather  formidable  beginning  for  a 
talk  on  salesmanship.  I  fear  I  must  produce 
an  anti-climax  if  I  am  to  reach  my  subject 
within  five  hundred  words.  But  anti-climaxes, 
like  premature  explosions,  sometimes  make 

2 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

deep  indentations.  The  thought  I  want  to  in- 
dent you  with  is  this:  A  man  can't  tell  the 
whole  truth  about  himself. 

Realize  this  and  you  grasp  the  hopelessness 
of  learning  much  about  salesmanship  from  the 
recounted  experiences  of  others.  A  sale  is  a 
contract..  One  of  the  dryest,  and  accordingly 
one  of  the  most  authoritative,  legal  commen- 
tators the  world  has  ever  known,  in  part  de- 
fines a  contract  as  a  ."meeting  of  minds." 
Therefore,  knowing  how  to  be  a  salesman 
would  seem  to  consist  in  knowing  how  to 
make  minds  meet  —  your  mind  and  your  cusj 
tomer's  mind.  Does  any  one  know  how?  The 
reminiscences  of  the  veteran  salesman  are  cal- 
culated to  impress  one  that  he  has  learned  the 
secret.  But  reminiscence  nearly  always  re- 
counts successes  and  touches  lightly  or  not  at 
all  upon  failures.  As  an  example  of  that  I 
commend  to  your  notice  Mr.  Thomas  Law- 
son's  occasional  reviews  of  his  services  to  the 
speculating  public. 

There  are  lots  of  good  salesmen,  but 
scarcely  any  who  can  really  tell  you  anything 

3 


SALESMANSHIP 

f  about  salesmanship.  Take  the  worst  example 
of  poverty-stricken  and  unsuccessful  lawyer 

^.and  compare  him  with  the  best  example  of 
flourishing  and  highly  paid  salesman.  You 
will  find  that  the  poor  lawyer  probably  knows 
twice  as  much  about  law  as  the  good  salesman 
knows  about  salesmanship  —  this  despite  the 
perplexing  turkey  trot  which  vested  rights, 
public  clamor,  rule  of  reason,  and  judicial  re- 
call are  doing  before  the  distracted  vision  of 
our  imperiled  judiciary.  Make  the  same  com- 
parison with  doctors,  architects,  dentists,  en- 
gineers, actors,  and  chorus  men  —  yes,  even 
chorus  men,  for  a  chorus  man  has  to  know 
more  about  being  a  chorus  man  than  the  av- 
erage salesman  knows  about  salesmanship. 

Have  I  a  grudge  against  salesmen?  Indeed, 
no.  I  am  a  salesman  myself.  I've  done  my 
trick  at  managing  them.  I'm  through  with 
managing  salesmen,  I  think,  but  I  shall  never 
cease  to  be  a  salesman.  When  I  roast  sales- 
men, I  'm  roasting  myself.  Don't  forget  that. 
Why  is  salesmanship  so  little  understood? 
In  trying  to  answer  that  question  let  us  try  to 

4 


RULE  OF  THUMB   SCIENCE 

find  something  that  can  be  compared  to  selling 
merchandise.  There  are  points  of  comparison 
between  salesmanship  and  love-making.  Wh« 
can  tell  anybody  anything  about  love-making? 
Many  a  despairing  Romeo  gets  advice,  but 
what  good  is  it?  Many  a  tattler  boasts  of  his 
conquests,  but  how  true  is  it?  Love  —  like 
salesmanship  —  involves  a  meeting  of  jJie 
minds.  I  have  never  credited  the  heart  alone 
wfth  being  responsible  for  the  tender  senti- 
ment. What  makes  the  minds  of  lovers  meet? 
Suppose  you  once  won  the  affections  of  a  slen- 
der brunette.  What  chance  would  you  have 
with  a  stout  blonde?  The  same  chance — 
precisely.  As  my  friend  Tom  Connors  says: 
"When  you  lose,  you  deserve  to  lose,  and 
when  you  win,  it's  luck."  It  is  somewhat  that 
way  with  salesmanship. 

I  have  been  a  salesman  quite  a  number  of 
years.  I  think  and  dream  salesmanship  and 
—  what  is  more  important  to  me  —  I  live  by 
salesmanship.  Yet  I  don't  know  very  much 
about  it.  But,  little  as  I  know,  I  shan't  be 
able  to  tell  you  as  much  as  I  know,  for  a  man 

5 


SALESMANSHIP 

can't  tell  all  he  knows  about  selling  goods 
without  an  honest  and  just  analysis  of  himself. 
And  who  is  capable  of  that?  However,  I'm 
going  to  tell  you  as  much  as  I  can. 

If  a  sale  involves  a  meeting  of  minds,  let  us 
consider  the  kind  of  minds  the  salesman's 
mind  has  to  meet. 

One  day  on  a  Rock  Island  train  I  overheard 
a  conversation  between  a  grocery  drummer 
and  a  hardware  salesman.  The  grocery  man 
said  to  the  hardware  man : "  Selling  goods  is  all 
in  sizing  up  your  man.  You  can't  handle  any 
two  men  alike.  I  read  character  at  a  glance." 

The  train  pulled  into  Iowa  City,  and  the 
three  of  us  and  a  few  others  clambered  into  the 
hotel  bus.  Now  every  traveling  man,  who  has 
been  on  the  road  long  enough  to  qualify  him- 
self for  commercial  travelers'  accident  insur- 
ance, knows  the  etiquette  that  should  be  ob- 
served in  a  country  hotel  bus.  No  matter  how 
voluble  you  may  have  been  aboard  the  train, 
you  relapse  into  a  gloomy  silence  the  instant 
you  enter  the  hotel  bus.  You  gaze  with  un- 
seeing eyes  over  the  shoulder  of  the  man  oppo- 

6 


RULE  OF  THUMB   SCIENCE 

site  you  and  surrender  your  mind  to  a  painful 
consideration  of  the  gastronomic  horrors  in 
store  for  you  at  the  hotel. 

At  such  a  time  no  one  but  a  grocery  drum- 
mer would  venture  upon  any  form  of  conver- 
sation beyond  a  contemptuous  reference  to 
the  departing  train,  a  sarcastic  comment  on 
the  bus  driver  and  his  vehicle,  or  a  self-com- 
miserating estimate  of  the  hardships  of  a  trav- 
eling man's  life.  Grocery  drummers  alone  are 
immune  to  the  rising  gorge  that  chokes  other 
traveling  men  as  they  journey  from  the  rail- 
way station  to  the  hotel  of  a  country  town 
(apologies  to  Iowa  City  and  its  passable  tav- 
erns). 

This  grocery  drummer  was  no  exception  to 
the  exception,  and  after  he  had  set  fire  to  "an 
Havana-filled,  Sumatra-wrapped,"  twenty- 
seven-dollars-a-thousand  "grocer's  delight" 
and  recovered  his  suitcase,  which  had  bounced 
off  the  seat  on  to  the  toes  of  a  bilious-looking 
Marshall  Field  carpet  and  curtain  man,  he 
resumed  his  appreciation  of  himself.  "Hu- 
man nature,"  he  observed,  "is  pretty  much 

7 


SALESMANSHIP 

the  same  the  world  over  —  even  down  in 
Washington  County  among  the  'Aw-mish.' 
I  got  a  system  now  that  they  all  fall  for." 

Smile;  please  smile  at  this.  And  yet,  why 
should  you?  For  you  have  heard  equally 
contradictory  statements  from  the  mouths  of 
other  traveling  men  who  were  trying  to  ex- 
plain their  methods,  and  —  if  you  have  ever 
been  a  traveling  man  —  you  have  possibly 
made  the  same  sort  of  conflicting  statements 
yourself. 

But  what  he  said  was  n't  so  foolish  after  all. 
This  chap  was  very  close  to  a  great  truth.  He 
was  close  to  it  without  comprehending  what 
the  truth  is. 

Human  nature  is  pretty  much  the  same  the 
world  over  —  the  United  States  over,  at 
least.  On  the  other  hand,  none  of  us  are  ex- 
actly alike  in  character  or  temperament.  A 
salesman  who  had  five  hundred  potential  cus- 
tomers, and  could  read  their  characters  and 
adapt  his  methods  to  the  character  of  each, 
would  have  five  hundred  different  methods  — 
a  different  method  for  every  customer.  Mani- 

8 


RULE   OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

festly  no  traveling  man  could  have  five  hun- 
dred different  methods.  I  have  never  known 
one  who  had  as  many  as  five.  One  method  is 
the  limit  of  the  average  salesman  if  you  cor- 
rectly define  the  word  "method." 

Possibly,  if  a  salesman  could  really  read 
character  he  would  also  be  gifted  with  suffi^ 
cierit  versatility  to  apply  a  different  method 
to  each  different  kind  of  character.  But  who 
can  read  character?  I  don't  understand  my 
own  character.  You  don't  understand  yours. 
How  can  you  read  mine?  How  can  I  read 
yours  ?  The  shallowest  character  lies  too  deep 
to  be  fathomed  by  the  most  penetrating  eyes. 
The  supposed  manifestations  of  character 
which  mark  a  long  and  intimate  acquaintance 
with  a  given  man  are  not  to  be  depended  upon. 
How  much  less  can  we  rely  on  our  superficial 
estimate  of  a  stranger. 

The  young  man  who  contemplates  sales- 
manship as  a  profession  may  safely  free  his 
mind  from  the  thought  that  the  ability  to  read 
character  is  an  essential  qualification.  How- 
ever, there  are  two  desirable  qualifications  in 

9 


SALESMANSHIP 

a  salesman  which  are  perhaps  responsible  for 
the  mistaken  theory  that  an  experienced  sales- 
man becomes  able  to  read  cbafa-eter.  The 
first  is  the  ability  of  the  salesman  to  adapt 
the  method  of  his  approach  to  the  apparent 
temperament  of  his  customer.  The  second  is 
the  curious  faculty  of  divining  the  proper  time 
to  risk  everything  on  the  "closing  talk."  The 
first  is  easily  enough  explained  and  easily 
enough  acquired.  The  second  is  infinitely 
more  difficult.  Both  will  be  touched  upon  in 
their  proper  places. 

Now,  I  have  gone  as  far  as  I  can  without 
dividing  a  sale  into  its  four  severable  parts. 
This  division  is  imperative  to  an  intelligent 
consideration  of  the  subject  of  salesmanship. 
It  is  even  more  important  to  the  actual  mak- 
ing of  a  sale.  The  projection  of  your  mind 
to  a  successful  meeting  with  another  human 
mind  requires  the  accomplishment  of  four 

tmct  steps  with  your  auditor:  First,  you 
must  gain  his  undivided  attention.  Second, 
you  must  arouse  his  definite  interest.  Third, 
you  must  create  an  unqualified  belief  in  and 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

accord  with  your  statements.  Fourth,  when 
you  have  removed  all  quibbles  and  doubts 
from  his  mind,  you  must  replace  them  in- 
stantly with  an  impelling  resolution  to  do  the 
thing  you  ask. 

These  four  steps,  whether  accomplished  by 
the  salesman's  skill  alone  or  aided  by  the  cus- 
tomer's previous  deliberations  or  some  freak 
of  circumstance,  must  occur  in  every  sale.  It 
is  important  that  the  salesman  be  sure  the 
first  step  is  accomplished  before  he  essays  the 
second;  the  second  before  he  attempts  the 
third;  and  above  all  else  he  must  proceed  to 
the  final  step  at  precisely  the  proper  moment 
• — the  psychological  moment,  if  you  will. 

We  take  up  the  consideration  of  the  first 
step:  attention-getting  or  approach.  Our 
friend  the  grocery  drummer  said,  "You  can't 
handle  any  two  men  alike";  and  implied  that 
he  handled  his  customers  according  to  his 
estimate  of  their  respective  characters.  He 
also  said,  "Human  nature  is  pretty  much  the 
same  the  world  over."  I  say  that  he  was  very 
close  to  a  great  truth  without  comprehending 

ii 


SALESMANSHIP 

what  the  truth  is.  There  is  comparatively 
little  truth  in  the  statement  that  "You  can't 
handle  any  two  men  alike,"  but  it  contains 
enough  self-evident  truth  to  be  fatally  mis- 
leading if  one  does  not  establish  its  proper  re- 
lation to  the  greater  truth  that  "Human  na- 
ture is  pretty  much  the  same  the  world  over." 
There  are  certain  impulses,  ambitions,  preju- 
dices, vanities,  and  suspicions  which  in  vary- 
ing degree  are  common  to  us  all.  A  consider- 
able part  of  judge-made  law  is  based  upon  the 
judicial  concept  of  that  creature  of  hypothe- 
sis called  an  average  man.  In  numerous  law 
cases  and  in  numerous  kinds  of  law  cases,  the 
conduct,  thoughts,  and  motives  of  the  indi- 
vidual are  measured  by  the  judge's  or  jury's 
estimate  of  what  would  be  the  conduct, 
thoughts,  and  motives  of  the  average  man  in 
similar  circumstances.  This  average  man, 
which  the  courts  attempt  mentally  to  visualize, 
is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  definite  em- 
bodiment of  our  grocery  drummer's  theory 
that  "Human  nature  is  pretty  much  the  same 
the  world  over." 

12 


RULE  OF  THUMB   SCIENCE 

As  a  rule  a  traveling  salesman  who  is  about 
to  take  to  the  road  with  a  new  line  of  goods 
does  not  plan  in  advance  the  precise  manner 
in  which  he  will  present  his  proposition.  If 
you  ask  him  what  methods  he  intends  to  pur- 
sue, he  is  likely  to  say,  "It  all  depends  on  the 
man  I  'm  trying  to  sell.  I  '11  probably  have  to 
handle  each  case  differently." 

What  he  really  does  is  to  outline  in  his  mind 
the  talking  points  which  he  believes  will  be 
effective.  When  he  reaches  his  first  prospec- 
tive customer  he  makes  use  of  as  many  of 
these  points  as  he  remembers  or  finds  an  op- 
portunity to  present.  The  salesman's  imag- 
ined handling  of  each  case  "according  to  the 
man"  is  largely  a  delusion.  The  salesman 
doesn't  handle  the  "man."  The  "man" 
handles  the  salesman,  because  the  latter  has 
not  worked  out  and  rehearsed  a  definite  plan 
of  action.  After  a  salesman  has  interviewed 
a  number  of  potential  buyers,  he  evolves  a 
more  or  less  uniform  method  of  presenting 
his  subject.  This  is  what  he  calls  the  result 
of  his  experience.  But  it  must  be  remembered 

13 


SALESMANSHIP 

that  experience  does  not  become  knowledge 
until  it  is  fused  with  thought  in  the  crucible 
of  analysis  and  reflection.  I  have  no  hesita- 
tion in  saying  of  the  salesmen  whom  I  know 
that  ninety  per  cent  of  them  fail  properly  to 
analyze  and  reflect  upon  the  daily  events  of 
their  experience.  As  we  progress,  I  hope  to 
make  this  thought  clearer,  but  for  the  present 
this  reference  is  sufficient. 

While  I  do  not  think  a  salesman  should 
adopt  the  methods  of  the  actor,  I  do  feel 
that  he  should  know  his  book  as  well  as  the 
actor  and  strive  for  effects  as  zealously.  I  also 
believe  that  his  book  should  be  prepared  with 
as  great  an  effort  to  achieve  sustained  interest 
and  moving  climaxes  as  characterizes  the  con- 
struction of  a  play. 

Now  let  us  get  back  to  a  more  circumstan- 
tial discussion  of  the  meeting  of  minds  which 
must  occur  in  every  sale.  As  the  gaining  of 
attention,  most  aptly  called  approach,  is  the 
first  step  in  a  sale,  it  is  evident  that  a  salesman 
who  undertakes  to  work  out  a  definite  method 
of  procedure  should  first  plan  his  approach. 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

This  brings  us  face  to  face  again  with  our  aver- 
age man,  for  we  must  create  in  our  minds  the 
average  man  against  whom  our  selling  attack 
is  to  be  directed. 

At  this  point,  the  average  salesman,  after 
asserting  with  more  or  less  vehemence  that  a 
salesman's  approach  should  depend  entirely 
on  the  character  of  the  man  approached,  is 
likely  to  say,  "And  even  if  there  was  any- 
thing in  this  'average  man'  idea,  you'd  have 
to  have  a  good  many  different  kinds  of  aver- 
age men.  You'd  have  to  have  an  average 
country  merchant,  an  average  city  mer- 
chant, an  average  jobber,  and  an  average 
salaried  buyer."  Such  a  statement,  reason- 
able as  it  may  seem,  is  to  my  mind  an  in- 
dication that  the  salesman  who  utters  it  has 
failed  to  make  a  thorough  analysis  of  his 
experiences. 

In  forming  your  estimate  of  this  average 
man  with  whom  you  are  to  deal,  it  is  n't  neces- 
sary to  consider  whether  he's  going  to  sit  in  a 
luxurious  private  office  or  on  the  edge  of  a 
pickle  barrel.  Those  are  distinctions  to  be 

IS 


SALESMANSHIP  ' 

considered  after  you  have  approached  him  as 
an  average  man. 

The  best  way  to  create  an  average  man  in 
your  mind's  eye  is  to  analyze  yourself  and  sub- 
tract from  yourself  all  of  the  hobbies,  fads, 
vanities,  aspirations,  weaknesses,  and  pre- 
judices which,  so  far  as  you  are  able  to  judge, 
are  not  shared  with  you  by  a  majority  of  your 
acquaintances.  Take  what  is  left  of  you  and 
add  to  it  any  of  the  hobbies,  fads,  vanities, 
aspirations,  weaknesses,  and  prejudices  which 
you  do  not  possess,  but  which  you  believe  are 
possessed  by  a  majority  of  other  men.  The 
result  will  be  about  as  close  as  you  can  get  to 
a  true  concept  of  an  average  man.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  be  sincere  in  one's  self-analysis.  Per- 
haps it  is  equally  difficult  to  be  just  in  one's 
estimate  of  others.  Also  there  is  an  admitted 
difference  in  the  ability  of  men  to  judge  them- 
selves and  in  both  their  ability  and  oppor- 
tunity to  judge  others.  But  similar  difficulties 
and  similar  differences  in  result  are  incident  to 
any  purely  mental  function  when  performed 
by  different  people. 

16 


RULE  OF  THUMB   SCIENCE 

I  am  going  to  attempt  a  few  illustrations  of 
this  method  and  my  own  application  of  it.  To 
do  so,  I  must  present  a  certain  amount  of  self- 
analysis,  and  I  have  warned  you  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult for  a  man  to  discover  the  truth  about  him- 
self— or  tell  it  after  he  has  discovered  it.  With 
a  reiteration  of  that  warning,  let  me  proceed. 

I  imagine  myself  to  have  a  sense  of  humor. 
However,  my  observation  of  mankind  is  that 
a  majority  do  not  possess  a  very  highly  de- 
veloped sense  of  humor  and  are  either  irritated 
by  or  fail  to  comprehend  any  but  the  broadest 
or  most  colloquial  sort.  Therefore,  my  average; 
man's  sense  of  humor  is  of  a  very  primitive 
order,  and  when  I  approach  him,  I  am  as  seri- 
ous as  I  know  how  to  be. 

Personally,  I  adore  clever  people  and  detest 
stupid  ones;  but  my  experience  of  mankind 
is  that  a  majority,  if  not  stupid  themselves, 
at  least  are  antagonistic  to  cleverness.  Where- 
fore my  average  man  takes  no  pleasure  of 
cleverness  in  others,  and  I  make  no  attempt 
to  appear  to  him  as  clever.  It  is  no  doubt  well 
that  I  do  not,  for  true  cleverness  is  a  rare  quality 

17 


SALESMANSHIP 

As  a  youth  I  possessed  a  somewhat  fluent 
tongue  and  a  very  great  admiration  for  ele- 
gance of  diction  in  others.  But  I  observed 
that  most  men  are  inclined  to  be  suspicious  of 
what  they  call  a  "smooth  talker."  At  this 
stage  of  my  career,  which  was  shortly  after  I 
commenced  to  try  to  sell  merchandise,  I  ran 
across  an  Englishman  who  was  a  very  suc- 
cessful life  assurance  solicitor.  He  had  the  ap- 
pearance and  manner  of  a  villain  from  Drury 
Lane  melodrama  and  the  halting  speech  of  an 
American  musical  comedy  Englishman.  But 
in  spite  of  this,  he  sold  huge  quantities  of  life 
assurance,  and  I  observed  that  his  sketchy 
way  of  presenting  his  subject  seemed  to 
kindle  the  interest  of  the  people  he  approached 
and,  instead  of  escaping  through  the  gaps  in 
his  arguments,  his  auditors  were  more  likely 
to  build  up  these  gaps  by  their  own  questions 
and  the  exercise  of  their  own  imaginations, 
until  they  had  completely  ensnared  them- 
selves. As  a  result  of  my  study  of  this  man's 
methods  I  adopted  taciturnity  in  place  of  my 
previous  glibness  of  speech  when  approaching  a 

18 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

potential  buyer.  For  my  previous  flowing  and 
more  or  less  flowery  sentences  I  substituted 
brief  staccato  utterances  —  more  or  less  in- 
coherent, but  capable  of  extreme  emphasis, 
and,  by  virtue  of  their  very  incompleteness, 
arresting  the  attention  and  challenging  the 
interest  of  the  person  addressed. 

Personally,  the  positiveness  of  another's 
views  does  not  impress  me;  instead  it  breeds 
in  my  mind  distrust  of  his  sincerity  or  the 
suspicion  that  his  knowledge  is  superficial.  I 
try  to  make  it  a  rule  to  be  influenced  by  no 
one's  opinion  unless  I  know  the  facts  or  theo- 
ries on  which  he  bases  it.  But  it  has  been  my 
observation  that  dogmatic  utterance  carries 
weight  with  the  average  man  and  that  an  ex- 
cess of  logical  argument  arouses  his  suspicion 
that  you  are  trying  to  bolster  up  a  weak  case. 
Therefore,  the  keynote  of  my  approach  is  al- 
ways sounded  by  a  positive  and  unequivocal 
statement. 

The  foregoing  will  give  you  an  idea  of  some 
of  the  things  I  subtracted  from  my  own  esti- 
mate of  myself  in  order  to  discover  an  average 

19 


SALESMANSHIP 

man.  There  were  a  good  many  qualities  I 
did  n't  have  to  subtract  from  myself,  because 
I  found  that  a  majority  of  other  men  also  pos- 
sessed them.  Vanity  is  one  of  the  qualities  I 
did  not  subtract.  I  have  never  known  a  man 
who  was  not  vain.  Perhaps  the  vainest  man 
is  the  one  who  most  thoroughly  suppresses  the 
usual  manifestations  of  vanity. 

It  is  a  safe  assumption  that  every  man  is 
vain,  and  naturally  my  average  man  is  vain. 
How  shall  we  deal  with  his  vanity  when  we 
approach  him?  Every  one  likes  flattery,  but 
it  must  be  most  delicate  and  casual  if  it  does 
not  excite  suspicion.  In  other  words,  while 
your  flattery  may  gratify  me,  it  also  makes  me 
question  your  motives.  Flattery  has  no  proper 
place  in  approach.  If  used  at  all  in  salesman- 
ship, it  should  be  after  you  have  gained  atten- 
tion and  are  well  into  your  subject.  It  took 
me  a  long  time  to  learn  that  you  should  n't 
attempt  to  flatter  a  man  when  you  first  ap- 
proach him.  After  I  gave  up  word-flattery, 
I  tried  to  look  flattery.  For  example,  I  would 
gaze  around  a  man's  store  or  office  in  a  most 
20 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

admiring  way  before  introducing  myself.  I 
thought  this  was  subtle  enough  to  create  a 
glow  of  satisfaction  without  an  aftermath  of 
suspicion,  but  I  could  never  trace  any  good 
results  to  the  practice,  and  finally  abandoned 
it  after  a  rather  disconcerting  experience  with 
an  old  German,  who  attributed  my  scrutiny 
of  his  place  to  an  intent  to  appraise  his  stock 
of  merchandise  for  Dun  or  Bradstreet.  It 
seems  that  their  repeated  requests  for  finan- 
cial statements  had  incensed  him  and  he  sur- 
mised that  they  had  finally  sent  out  a  spy  in 
the  person  of  myself.  While  his  contrition  for 
the  error  resulted  in  an  easy  order,  the  inci- 
dent convinced  me  that  a  salesman's  approach 
should  be  unmixed  with  any  form  of  flattery. 
If  the  flattery  is  strong  enough  to  make  an 
impression  it  is  strong  enough  to  set  in  motion 
the  suspicions  of  your  prospective  customer, 
even  though  his  suspicions  do  not  take  so 
absurd  a  form  nor  are  so  frankly  revealed  as 
those  of  the  irascible  old  German. 

Then,  what  regard  shall  we  have  for  the 
average  man's  vanity  when  we  approach  him? 

21 


SALESMANSHIP 

I  am  ashamed  to  tell  you  where  I  discovered 
the  answer  to  this.  A  good  many  years  ago, 
a  friend  who  knows  the  underworld  pretty 
well  introduced  me  to  some  of  its  more  or  less 
celebrated  characters.  One  of  them,  a  confi- 
dence man,  explained  to  me,  "  It 's  all  a  mis- 
take to  salve  a  man  when  you  're  trying  to  get 
him  hooked.  You  want  to  act  like  you  don't 
think  he's  got  the  brains  or  the  coin  to  go 
through  on  your  proposition.  Put  it  up  to  him, 
so  he'll  have  to  hook  himself  in  order  to  show 
that  your  opinion  of  him  ain't  high  enough." 
This  roughly  phrased  fragment  of  philoso- 
phy did  not  make  much  of  an  impression  upon 
me  until  I  began  to  test  it  in  hypothesis  upon 
myself.  Then  I  realized  that  an  almost  cer- 
tain way  for  another  to  gain  my  attention 
would  be  to  imply  the  lack  of  some  quality  in 
me  which  I  believed  myself  to  possess.  Of 
course,  if  the  implication  was  made  in  an  offen- 
sive form,  my  antagonism  as  well  as  my  atten- 
tion would  be  aroused.  Evidently  the  implica- 
tion should  be  very  faint;  just  enough  to  make 
a  man  concentrate  his  mind  upon  you  —  if 

22 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

for  no  other  purpose  than  to  prove  to  you  that 
he  is  a  bigger  or  a  cleverer  man  than  you  seem 
to  realize. 

The  proper  application  to  salesmanship  of 
our  confidence  man's  theory  of  approach 
dawned  upon  me  at  last:  Ask  an  inoffensive 
question.  Make  that  question  almost  the  first 
speech  in  your  approach.  Suppose  you  are 
selling  saws.  If  they  are  high-priced  saws,  ask 
this  question  the  instant  you  can  get  your  man 
to  look  you  in  the  eye:  "Have  you  an  organ- 
ization that  can  sell  a  very  high-grade  saw?" 
There  is  no  possible  answer  he  can  make  which 
will  put  you  on  the  defensive  until  he  yields 
you  his  attention  and  invites  you  to  talk, 
which  is  what  you  are  there  for.  Let  us  con- 
struct a  few  answers  a  buyer  might  make  to 
such  a  question:  — 


Buyer.  We're  doing  it  now. 
Salesman.  I  guess  I  don't  make  clear  to  you 
the  kind  of  a  saw  I  mean. 
Buyer.  Well,  what  kind  do  you  mean? 
23 


SALESMANSHIP 

Or  (2) 

Buyer.  We  are  handling  the  best  saw  on  the 
market  now. 

Salesman.  I'm  talking  about  a  different 
kind  of  a  saw. 

Buyer.  What  kind  are  you  talking  about? 

Or  (3) 

Buyer.  What  we've  got  satisfies  us. 

Salesman.  But  could  your  organization  sell 
a  high-grade  saw?  (Which  brings  the  buyer 
back  to  where  he  was  in  the  first  place.) 

If  a  saw  salesman  asks  the  question,  "Have 
you  an  organization  that  can  sell  a  very  high- 
grade  saw?"  and  his  rejoinders  to  the  buyer's 
questions  are  a  polite  but  emphatic  reitera- 
tion of  the  original  thought,  the  buyer  must 
finally  invite  an  elucidation  of  that  thought. 

Any  similar  question  will  serve.  Please  fix 
this  point  in  your  mine}:  You  have  n't  prop- 
erly analyzed  your  goods  if  you  can't  frame 
an  inoffensive  attention-getting  question  for 

24 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

use  in  your  approach.  The  other  day  I  was 
talking  to  a  man  who  sells  prints  to  shirt- 
waist manufacturers.  He  said,  as  nearly  every 
salesman  will  say,  "My  line  is  different  from 
any  other."  He  also  said,  "There  is  no  ques- 
tion I  could  ask  a  manufacturer  of  shirt- 
waists, except  to  request  him  to  look  at  my 
samples." 

I  asked  him  to  name  the  chief  talking  point 
about  his  goods.  "The  prettiest  Parisian  pat- 
terns in  advance  of  competitors,"  he  replied. 

Then  I  suggested:  "Suppose  you  said  to 
a  manufacturer,  'Have  you  any  trade  that 
would  appreciate  a  pattern  that  is  a  positive 
craze  in  Paris  right  now  —  not  yesterday  but 
to-day?'  What  would  the  manufacturer  say 
to  that?" 

"Why,  he'd  say,  'Let's  see  it,'"  was  the 
answer. 

"Is  n't  that  what  you'd  want  him  to  say?" 
I  inquired. 

"Gee,  I  guess  that's  right." 

It's  so  simple  that  it  sounds  foolish  —  but 
every  truth  is  simple  in  its  final  analysis. 
25 


SALESMANSHIP 

So  much  for  vanity.  Now,  I  have  observed 
that  my  eyes  can  deliver  a  message  to  my 
brain  more  quickly  than  my  ears.  I  have  ob- 
served the  same  of  others.  I  have  noticed,  too, 
that  my  attention  can  be  focused  more  com- 
pletely through  my  eyes  than  in  any  other 
way.  Accordingly,  I  always  like  to  have  some 
object  to  place  before  the  eyes  of  my  prospec- 
tive customer.  If  possible,  it  should  be  the 
article  you  are  trying  to  sell  or  some  portion 
of  it.  If  that  is  impossible,  then  you  should 
have  a  picture,  a  newspaper  clipping,  or  an 
unusual  testimonial.  The  best  time  to  show 
this  object  is  right  after  you  have  cornered  the 
buyer  with  your  question.  If  you  are  selling  a 
saw,  wait  until  you  have  forced  the  buyer  to 
ask  you,  in  effect,  what  kind  of  a  saw  you  are 
talking  about.  Then  pull  out  one  of  the  saws 
or  a  piece  of  steel,  and  say,  "There  it  is,"  or 
"There's  what  it's  made  of."  The  most  cyn- 
ical buyer  cannot  avoid  a  distinct  feeling  of 
interest  in  any  object  that  is  placed  in  his 
hands  —  even  if  it  is  merely  a  coffee  bean. 

Give  him  a  dramatic  moment  in  which  to 
26 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

examine  the  article  you  have  placed  in  his 
hands.  Then  make  the  assertion  which  you 
have  selected  as  a  means  of  fairly  transfixing 
his  attention.  This  is  what  I  have  referred  to 
as  the  keynote  of  approach.  Such  a  speech 
should  be  as  brief  and  emphatic  as  you  can 
make  it.  If  it  succeeds  in  its  purpose,  you  have 
won  attention,  and  you  may  pass  on  to  the 
second  step  of  your  attempted  sale  —  the  de- 
velopment and  enlargement  of  your  auditor's 
interest.  If  it  fails,  you  should  go  over  the 
same  ground  again  and  again  with  a  variation 
of  words,  but  not  of  thought  or  purpose,  until 
undivided  attention  is  finally  yielded  to  you. 
Do  not  make  the  blunder  of  attempting  to  ex- 
pand your  customer's  interest  until  you  are 
certain  you  have  fixed  his  attention  on  the 
identical  subject  in  which  you  desire  to  center 
his  interest. 

I  have  used  a  good  many  words  in  discuss- 
ing how  you  should  plan  your  approach  to 
the  average  man,  but  I  have  by  no  means 
touched  on  all  the  traits  of  the  average  man 
which  should  be  considered  in  planning  the 

27* 


SALESMANSHIP 

first  step  of  a  sale.  However,  if  I  have  made 
clear  my  method  of  plotting  against  the  poor 
fellow,  I  have  accomplished  enough.  You 
probably  know  him  as  well  as  I  do,  for  he  is  as 
much  like  you  as  he  is  like  me. 

We  are  now  at  the  point  of  considering  this 
mystery-enshrined  problem  of  "  sizing  up  your 
man,"  or  "reading  his  character,"  or  what- 
ever you  choose  to  call  it.  To  show  you  how 
important  I  consider  it  as  a  factor  in  applied 
salesmanship,  when  compared  with  the  im- 
portance of  constructing  a  true  image  of  an 
average  man,  I  shall  dismiss  the  subject  with 
a  very  few  words.  You  don't  read  a  man's 
"character"  when  you  see  him.  If  you  size 
him  up,  it  is  merely  to  observe,  for  example, 
whether  he  is  deliberate  or  impetuous,  phleg- 
matic or  volatile,  serious  or  flippant,  placid 
or  irascible,  courteous  or  ill-mannered,  patient 
or  impatient.  Naturally  you  try  to  harmonize 
yourself  with  those  phases  of  his  temperament 
which  are  most  apparent.  You  speak  quickly 
to  a  quick-spoken  or  nervous  man.  You  are 
slower  of  speech,  but  no  less  emphatic,  with  a 

28 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

deliberate  man.  You  are  self-assertive  with 
an  ill-mannered  man.  But  why  multiply  ex- 
amples of  this  so-called  character-reading  and 
Its  influence  upon  your  method  of  approaching 
a  prospective  customer?  It  is  largely  instinc- 
tive, which  is  no  doubt  why  many  salesmen 
rely  upon  it  in  preference  to  premeditated 
speech  and  acts  which  require  constructive 
thought. 

When  you  get  to  know  a  man  you  will  nat- 
urally adapt  your  manner  of  approach  to 
your  estimate  of  his  temperament,  but  do  not 
mistake  the  exchange  of  personal  amenities  for 
real  attention-getting.  The  attention  a  sales- 
man requires  is  not  attention  for  himself 
alone.  What  he  needs  is  an  approach  that  will 
compel  attention  for  some  particular  article 
in  his  line  or  some  particular  phase  of  his  prop- 
osition. He  does  not  want  the  merely  tolerant 
attention  of  friendship.  The  salesman  who 
places  his  reliance  on  the  friendship  of  a  buyer 
is  backing  a  high-weighted  horse  at  short  odds. 

As  to  the  class  of  man  you  are  approaching, 
—  that  is  to  say,  whether  he  is  the  kind  of  man 

29 


SALESMANSHIP 

who  sits  in  a  luxurious  office  or  the  kind  who 
sits  on  the  edge  of  a  pickle  barrel,  —  my  ad- 
vice is  to  disregard  such  distinctions.  Act  the 
way  you  feel,  unless  you  happen  to  feel  sub- 
dued by  Turkish  rugs  and  rosewood  desks. 
In  that  event,  don't  act  the  way  you  feel. 

One  more  word  and  I  am  done  with  the  sub- 
ject of  approach.  I  can  imagine  a  jobber's 
salesman  saying  that  my  method  is  not  practi- 
cable for  a  man  who  sells  an  extensive  line.  In 
my  opinion  a  great  weakness  in  the  methods 
of  most  salesmen  for  jobbing  houses  is  that 
they  do  not  base  their  approach  on  one  specific 
article,  but  scatter  fire.  I  shall  enlarge  upon 
this  later. 

Don't  try  to  tell  your  whole  story  when  you 
approach  a  prospective  customer.  A  common 
and  very  bad  introductory  remark  is  some- 
what as  follows :  "  I  am  representing  Smith  & 
Jones  of  Johnstown.  We  make  a  very  fine  line 
of  'Thingumbobs'  and  I  want  to  see  if  I  can't 
interest  you  in  our  line."  Whatever  else  you 
do  or  say,  don't  say  that. 

Attention  may  be  called  the  dawn  of  inter- 
So 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

est,  if  you  can  imagine  a  dawn  that  will  turn 
tail  at  the  slightest  excuse  and  slip  back  into 
the  darkness  whence  it  came. 

Perhaps  it  is  closer  to  the  mark  to  say  that 
attention  is  a  challenge,  since  the  man  who 
gives  you  his  attention  yields  a  temporary 
interest  which  his  mind  challenges  you  rto 
hold. 

Real  interest  is  involuntary  mental  con- 
centration ;  forced  interest  is  an  unwilling  cap- 
tive; and  feigned  interest  an  amiable  deceit. 
It  is  never  safe  to  assume  that  any  talking 
point  is  of  inherent  interest  to  a  buyer,  nor 
that  you  can  interest  him  in  your  goods  merely 
by  describing  their  good  qualities  in  a  con- 
vincing way. 

I  never  knew  any  one  to  buy  a  photograph 
of  a  banquet  which  he  had  attended  if  the 
photographer  failed  to  get  him  in  the  picture. 
If  I  wanted  to  impress  Niagara  Falls  on  a 
man's  mind  so  that  he  would  never  forget  the 
scene,  I  should  photograph  the  falls  with  the 
man  in  the  foreground  and  give  him  a  copy 
of  the  photograph.  If  we  want  to  hold  the 


'  SALESMANSHIP 

interest  of  a  buyer  as  we  describe  our  goods, 
we  must  keep  him  in  the  picture. 

Our  average  man  is  always  interested  in 
himself.  If  we  are  trying  to  sell  a  high-priced 
saw  and  ask  the  buyer,  when  we  approach 
him,  whether  he  has  a  sales  organization  that 
can  sell  a  very  high-grade  saw,  we  gain  his  at- 
tention because  we  touch  his  vanity,  and  we 
attach  a  tether  rope  to  his  interest  because  we 
make  the  quality  of  our  saw  part  and  parcel 
of  the  buyer's  consideration  of  his  own  sales 
ability.  We  gain  momentary  possession  of  his 
interest,  but  if  we  proceed  to  talk  about  our- 
selves and  our  saw  without  bringing  him  into 
the  story,  his  mind  is  likely  to  pull  the  tether 
pin  and  gallop  off  to  the  consideration  of  other 
subjects. 

A  buyer's  interest  in  the  quality  of  your 
goods  can  be  developed  to  the  extent  only  that 
he  sees  in  their  superior  quality  a  means  of 
increasing  his  own  business  profits  or  prestige. 
A  quality  talk  should  always  be  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  buyer  as  a  seller  and  in  the 
identical  terms  that  he  would  use  in  selling 
32 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

your  goods  to  his  own  trade.  If  the  buyer  is 
a  jobber,  take  him  with  you  on  an  imaginary 
trip  over  his  territory  and  talk  to  his  trade 
about  your  goods.  If  he  is  a  retailer,  place 
yourself  behind  his  counter  in  your  imagina- 
tion and  talk  to  his  patrons.  In  addition  to 
convincing  a  buyer  of  the  superior  excellence 
of  your  merchandise,  you  must  also  convince 
him  that  he  can  convince  his  trade. 

The  test  of  the  buyer's  interest  in  your  de- 
scription of  your  goods  is  whether  you  have 
made  him  forget  that  he  is  a  buyer.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  bring  him  into  the  picture  as  a  seller 
and  make  him  see  himself  using  successfully 
with  his  trade  the  same  quality  talk  that  you 
are  using  with  him.  If  you  can  make  a  buyer 
desire  to  remember  what  you  are  saying  to  him 
so  that  he  can  say  the  same  thing  to  his  own 
customers,  you  have  captured  his  real  interest 
in  the  quality  of  your  goods  —  and  short  of 
that  you  have  n't. 

"Was  unable  to  interest  him."  I  don't 
know  how  many  times  I  have  read  those 
words  in  traveling  men's  reports.  I  may  have 

33 


SALESMANSHIP 

used  them  myself  when  I  first  went  on  the 
road.  It  is  a  confession  that  no  salesman 
should  have  to  make.  He  might  as  well  re- 
port: "I  saw  Jones,  but  I  could  n't  get  him  to 
look  up  from  his  desk."  A  salesman  can  al- 
ways get  attention  and  develop  some  degree 
of  interest.  Yet  there  are  thousands  of  sales- 
men who  do  not  always  successfully  negotiate 
these  preliminary  steps  of  a  sale  and  many  of 
them  fail  without  knowing  they  have  failed. 
The  other  day  a  salesman  thanked  me  for  my 
attention  and  my  interest  in  his  proposition, 
when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  my  attention  had 
been  directed  to  the  circumstance  that  he  was 
wearing  a  blue  cravat  with  a  brown  suit  and 
my  interest  engaged  by  the  peculiar  conforma- 
tion of  his  ears.  Nor  was  my  frivolity  respon- 
sible for  this.  The  man  had  a  fair  chance  to 
transfer  my  attention  to  the  thing  he  had  to 
sell,  but  because  I  looked  at  him  he  believed 
he  had  all  of  the  attention  necessary.  He 
could  have  excited  my  interest  in  something 
besides  his  ears  if  he  had  brought  up  any  point 
of  real  interest  to  me.  But  he  did  n't.  He  took 

34 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

up  his  allotted  time  in  talking  about  things 
that  interested  him,  and  because  I  listened  he 
imagined  that  I  was  interested. 

I  cannot  lay  too  much  emphasis  on  the  point 
that  the  way  to  arouse  a  merchant's  interest 
is  to  put  yourself  in  his  place  and  talk  to  his 
trade  instead  of  to  him.  One  of  the  best  sales- 
men I  know  carries  with  him  an  imaginary 
person  whom  he  calls  Mr.  Dinkenspiel.  This 
salesman  sells  all  his  goods  to  Mr.  Dinken- 
spiel. He  will  start  in  something  like  this :  — 

"Now,  there  is  Mr.  Dinkenspiel  up  at  Wor- 
cester, Massachusetts."  "Dinkenspiel  is  such 
and  such  a  kind  of  a  man."  "We  go  up  to  see 
Dinkenspiel."  "Dinkenspiel  says  'so  and 
so.'"  "We  say  to  Dinkenspiel  'so  and  so.'" 

Dinkenspiel  is  the  greatest  cosmopolitan  in 
the  world,  for  he  lives  wherever  this  salesman 
wants  him  to  live.  He  is  the  most  versatile 
person  in  the  world  because  he  instantly  as- 
sumes any  character  the  salesman  gives  him. 
However,  the  buyer  can  always  recognize  one 
of  his  customers  in  Dinkenspiel  and  uncon- 
sciously becomes  a  seller  instead  of  a  buyer  as 
35 


SALESMANSHIP 

his  mind  follows  the  imagined  sale  to  Mr. 
Dinkenspiel. 

Every  salesman  should  have  a  Dinkenspiel, 
and  those  who  sell  to  retail  merchants  should 
have  a  Mrs.  Dinkenspiel,  to  whom  in  fancy 
they  can  sell  their  goods  over  the  merchant's 
counter  while  the  merchant  listens. 

One  final  word  on  the  second  step  of  a  sale. 
No  matter  how  many  different  kinds  of  goods 
you  have  to  sell,  start  in  on  a  single  article 
and  keep  the  buyer's  interest  on  that  article 
until  you  have  sold  it  to  him  or  convinced 
yourself  that  he  won't  buy  it.  Even  though 
you  are  traveling  for  a  jobbing  house  and 
carry  a  catalogue  as  big  as  a  dictionary,  you 
should  commence  as  if  you  had  but  one  thing 
to  sell.  Actually  sell  something  before  you 
commence  to  rifle  the  pages  of  your  catalogue 
and  drone  out  your  inquiries  as  to  whether  the 
buyer  needs  any  of  this  or  wants  a  little  of 
that.  Make  a  clean-cut  sale  right  at  the  start, 
and  subsequent  orders  will  come  a  good  deal 
easier  and  faster.  I  suppose  this  is  a  result  of 
the  meeting  of  minds  which  occurs  in  an  actual 
36 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

sale  as  distinguished  from  a  voluntary  offering 
in  the  shape  of  an  order.  After  the  minds  of 
buyer  and  salesman  have  met  in  a  real  sale, 
they  appear  to  synchronize  more  fully  as  the 
pages  of  the  catalogue  are  turned.  Perhaps 
this  is  n't  the  explanation,  but  the  fact  re- 
mains, and  I  commend  the  method  to  every 
jobber's  salesman. 

The  third  step  of  a  sale  is  to  nail  down  what 
you  have  previously  said.  In  developing  the 
interest  of  your  prospective  customer  you  will 
very  possibly  have  carried  him  to  a  point  from 
which  there  will  be  some  reaction.  You  must 
expect  reaction.  It  is  better  to  have  it  before 
than  after  you  get  the  order.  Reaction  after 
you  have  gone  away  with  the  order  is  very 
likely  to  mean  cancellation.  A  countermand 
usually  means  that  you  overplayed  your 
hand. 

You  have  interested  your  prospective  cus- 
tomer as  you  sketched  the  possibilities  of  your 
line  arid  told  him  of  its  good  qualities.  You 
have  sold  the  goods  to  Mr.  Dinkenspiel  and 
your  customer  has  heard  you  do  it.  While  he 

37 


SALESMANSHIP 

listened  he  ceased  to  be  a  buyer  and  in  his 
imagination  became  a  seller.  But  before  you 
get  his  order  he  becomes  the  buyer  again.  You 
have  made  him  comprehend  what  you  claim 
for  your  goods  in  quality  and  salability.  The 
next  step  is  to  bring  him  to  a  full  belief  in  and 
accord  with  your  statements  —  by  making 
him  see  a  profit. 

He  wants  to  make  money.  You  must  show 
him  certainly  and  definitely  how  your  goods 
will  make  money  for  him.  If  they  are  priced 
at  such  a  figure  that  he  can't  derive  an  at- 
tractive direct  profit  from  their  sale,  you  must 
be  able  to  show  him  how  they  will  build  up 
his  prestige  and  trade,  and  give  him  the  de- 
sired profit  indirectly,  if  not  directly. 

No  matter  how  excellent  your  wares  may 
be,  no  matter  how  satisfactory  they  will  prove 
to  the  trade,  no  matter  how  easily  they  can  be 
sold,  our  average  man  insists  on  seeing  a  satis- 
factory profit  in  them  in  some  form  or  other 
before  he  will  give  you  his  order. 

I  have  heard  salesmen  say:  "Yes,  I  know, 
Mr.  Jones,  the  profit  on  our  goods  is  a  little 

38 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

less,  but  consider  the  satisfaction  of  handling 
a  line  like  ours."  The  satisfaction  which  a 
merchant  gets  from  handling  a  high-grade 
article  is  secondary  to  the  satisfaction  he  ex- 
periences in  making  an  attractive  profit.  I 
have  never  known  a  merchant  to  place  an 
order  for  goods  merely  that  he  might  have  the 
satisfaction  of  handling  them.  Tradesmen 
handle  merchandise  for  the  profit.  Postage- 
stamps  ordinarily  yield  the  apothecary  no 
direct  profit,  but  his  postage-stamp  business 
extends  his  trade  and  affords  him  an  indirect 
profit.  The  grocer  may  handle  certain  widely 
advertised  goods  at  an  actual  loss,  but  he  has 
a  reason  for  doing  it  quite  apart  from  any 
satisfaction  he  derives  from  their  sale. 

Summed  up  briefly,  the  third  step  of  a 
sale  is  to  decorate  your  proposition  with  the 
dollar  sign.  The  reaction  which  the  buyer 
experiences  after  you  have  carried  to  the  high- 
est pitch  his  interest  in  the  quality  and  sal- 
ability  of  your  goods  will  manifest  itself  in 
one  controlling  thought:  "Can  I  make  more 
money  by  buying  these  goods?"  Don't  let 

39 


SALESMANSHIP 

him  ask  the  question.  Anticipate  it.  You 
know  the  climax  of  your  quality-and-salability 
talk.  Ring  down  the  curtain  on  that  line  of 
talk  when  you  have  reached  this  climax  and 
instantly  ring  up  on  your  profit-making  talk. 
I  have  asserted  that  the  third  step  of  a  sale 
is  to  nail  down  what  you  have  previously  said 
about  your  goods.  Convince  the  buyer  that 
there  is  a  sure  and  satisfactory  profit  to  be 
made  from  the  sale  of  your  line  and  you  have 
confirmed  to  his  entire  satisfaction  all  of  your 
previous  claims.  Up  to  the  third  step  of  a  sale, 
talk  quality  just  as  fervidly  as  the  truth  will 
permit;  then  prove  your  statements  by  show- 
ing the  buyer  how  much  money  he  is  going  to 
make.  Not  because  that  really  proves  quality, 
but  because  our  average  man  wants  to  believe 
the  best  of  anything  that  holds  forth  a  con- 
vincing prospect  of  more  money  in  his  pocket. 
Perhaps  you  say,  "Then  why  not  talk  about 
the  profit  first?"  Simply  because  profits  in 
trade  are  not  earned  until  sales  are  made,  and 
the  buyer's  mind  is  not  ready  to  consider  the 
subject  of  profits  until  you  have  shown  him 

40 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

the  possibility  of  sales.  Sales  before  profits  is 
the  order  of  events  in  trade.  Your  sales  argu- 
ments should  be  presented  in  the  same  order, 
for  that  sequence  of  thought  occurs  in  the 
buyer's  mind  as  he  considers  your  proposition, 
and  he  cannot  follow  you  attentively  if  your 
arguments  are  presented  in  a  different  se- 
quence. 

But  in  its  proper  place  the  profits  talk  is 
all-important,  and  every  salesman  should  have 
at  his  tongue's  end  a  definite  and  convincing 
statement  and  analysis  of  the  profits  that  can 
be  made  from  the  sale  of  his  goods.  If  you  are 
a  salesman  and  have  n't  a  lucid  profits  talk  in 
your  repertoire,  I  beg  of  you  to  take  pencil  and 
paper  to-night  and  work  one  out  to  the  last 
decimal  point,  for  the  accomplishment  of  the 
third  step  of  a  sale  depends  on  the  buyer's 
ability  to  see  a  profit  in  store  for  him. 

Now  comes  the  fourth  and  final  step  of  a 
sale.  You  have  disarmed  the  buyer  by  show- 
ing the  salability  and  the  profitableness  of  your 
goods.  He  is  ready  for  the  final  stroke.  But 
remember  that  a  buyer  has  wonderful  re- 


SALESMANSHIP 

sourcefulness  in  negation.  If  you  let  the  psy- 
chological moment  slip  by,  he  is  likely  to 
recover  his  shield  of  doubt  and  sword  of  dis- 
agreement and  put  you  to  rout.  Don't  let 
your  opportunity  escape.  The  instant  you 
have  reached  the  climax  of  your  profits  talk  is 
the  time  to  take  the  hazard. 

I  have  referred  to  the  faculty  of  divining  the 
proper  time  to  make  the  closing  talk.  It  would 
have  been  better  to  define  this  as  the  ability 
to  recognize  the  moment  you  have  convinced 
your  prospective  customer  that  there  is  an 
inviting  profit  in  your  goods.  When  that  mo- 
ment comes,  say  to  yourself:  "Mr.  Buyer,  I 
know  you're  going  to  buy  a  bill  of  goods  from 
me.  You  can't  help  it.  The  only  question  is 
how  big  a  bill  you  're  going  to  buy."  However, 
while  you  are  talking  to  yourself,  don't  give 
the  buyer  a  chance  to  put  an  excuse  or  objec- 
tion into  words .  A  thought  that  gets  into  words 
is  harder  to  combat  than  a  silent  thought. 

The  best  closing  stunt  I  know  of  is  to  out- 
line an  order.  It  keeps  before  the  buyer's  eyes 
the  picture  of  sales  and  profits  that  you  have 

42 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

drawn  and  it  keeps  him  in  the  picture.  You 
say:  "Now  to  start  in  on  this  proposition 
you'll  only  need" — well,  no  matter  how 
much  he's  going  to  need.  You  write  it  down, 
commenting  on  the  virtues  of  the  goods  as 
you  write.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  a  buyer 
will  seldom  interrupt  you  while  you  are  writ- 
ing, and  if  you  talk  as  you  write,  his  mind  fol- 
lows your  pencil  instead  of  formulating  ex- 
cuses, doubts,  and  objections.  When  you  have 
completed  the  memorandum  of  the  goods  you 
think  he  should  buy,  you  pass  it  over  to  him 
and  you  say:  "There's  about  what  you  ought 
to  have  as  a  starter."  The  expression  on  your 
face  is  a  sort  of  compromise  between  the  fe- 
rocity of  a  man-eating  tiger,  the  wistfulness  of 
a  hungry  dog,  and  the  self-complacency  of  a 
hoot  owl.  What  does  the  buyer  do?  He  either 
buys  or  he  does  n't  buy.  You  have  cast  the 
dice  and  you  have  won  or  lost. 

I  have  not  touched  on  special  discounts, 
impending  advances  in  price,  threatened  short- 
ages of  supply,  or  similar  inducements  and 
arguments  that  can  sometimes  be  offered  to 

43 


SALESMANSHIP 

the  buyer  as  a  part  of  the  closing  talk.  If  the 
salesman  can  truthfully  advance  any  such 
reasons  why  the  buyer  should  place  his  order 
at  once,  they  are  a  legitimate  aid  in  taking  the 
fourth  step  of  a  sale,  but  they  are  not  an  es- 
sential part  of  salesmanship. 

I  have  nearly  completed  what  I  have  to  say 
about  salesmanship,  the  rule -of -thumb  sci- 
ence. Its  fundamental  rules  are  few  and  sim- 
ple. Their  application  depends  upon  your 
estimate  of  yourself  and  the  average  man  with 
whom  you  have  to  deal.  Your  thumb  may  be 
either  longer  or  shorter  than  mine  —  hence 
salesmanship  must  always  be  a  rule-of-thumb 
science. 

It  has  required  some  restraint  to  refrain 
from  anecdotes  to  illustrate  the  points  I  have 
attempted  to  make.  Illustrative  stories  are 
almost  habitual  in  articles  on  salesmanship  — 
so  much  so  that  the  illustrations  usually  sub- 
merge and  obliterate  the  points  intended  to  be 
illustrated.  You  no  doubt  know  as  many 
stories  as  I,  and  I  leave  it  to  you  to  find  your 
own  illustrations. 

44 


RULE  OF  THUMB  SCIENCE 

I  should  be  entirely  through  now,  except 
that  a  man  who  knew  that  I  was  writing  this 
chapter  said  to  me  the  other  day:  "I  want  to 
read  what  you  say  about  personality.  That's 
the  important  thing  in  a  salesman,  and  it's 
a  thing  that's  born  in  a  man.  It's  something 
he  can't  acquire." 

To  avoid  disappointing  this  gentleman  I 
must  say  a  few  words  about  personality. 

Personality  in  salesmanship  is  merely  the 
radiation  of  self-confidence.  Be  sure  of  your 
ground  and  you  will  have  a  convincing  per- 
sonality. Some  people  are  born  with  self- 
confidence.  If  it  stops  short  of  offensive  ego- 
tism, they  have  a  certain  inborn  personality. 
But  personality  is  more  frequently  acquired 
than  inborn.  Don't  worry  about  it  any  more 
than  about  character  reading.  Know  your 
goods  thoroughly,  master  and  practice  the 
fundamental  principles  of  salesmanship,  and 
personality  will  descend  upon  you  like  a  halo. 


II 

OVER-THE-COUNTER   SALES 

ALTHOUGH  I  have  never  sold  a  pound  or 
a  penny's  worth  of  anything  over  a  counter 
from  the  inside  of  the  counter,  I  nevertheless 
approach  the  subject  of  retail  salesmanship 
with  the  utmost  assurance.  A  nearsighted 
paralytic,  criticizing  Ty  Cobb's  method  of 
running  bases,  could  not  feel  more  secure  than 
I  do  when  I  talk  about  selling  goods  at  retail. 
Furthermore,  it  is  a  subject  that  delights  me. 
I  feel  that  I  am  dwelling  on  wrongs  which  I 
have  personally  suffered.  My  views  on  retail 
salesmanship  are  largely  a  recital  of  griev- 
ances, grievances  that  have  arisen  in  trying  to 
get  retailers  to  sell  goods  for  me,  and  griev- 
ances that  have  resulted  from  trying  to  get 
them  to  sell  goods  to  me. 

I  have  some  money  in  the  bank  that  prob- 
ably would  n't  be  there  —  in  my  name  at 
least  —  if  a  little  real  salesmanship  had  been 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

practiced  on  me.  There  are  a  number  of  arti- 
cles I  have  wanted  for  a  number  of  years,  but 
still  lack,  although  I  have  examined  and  priced 
them  repeatedly.  This  I  consider  conclusive 
proof  of  a  prevalent  low  order  of  retail  sales- 
manship. I  know  that  I  would  be  susceptible 
to  salesmanship.  I  know  that  I  would  yield  to 
it  to  the  full  extent  of  my  purse  —  or  the  credit 
man's  estimate  of  my  credit  worthiness. 
Hence,  since  I  don't  yield,  it  must  be  that  I 
have  not  encountered  salesmanship. 

Come  with  me  and  let  us  visit  the  retail 
shops.  At  the  threshold  or  the  counter,  ac- 
cording to  the  character,  size,  and  system  of 
the  place,  we  are  greeted.  If  either  of  us  is 
personally  known  to  the  merchant  or  his  clerk, 
there  are,  of  course,  the  salutations  of  ac- 
quaintance, varying  with  the  extent  of  the 
acquaintance  and  the  esteem  which  it  has 
engendered.  But  whether  or  not  there  are  the 
obligations  of  acquaintance  to  be  discharged, 
we  are  fairly  sure  to  hear  a  certain  seven  words 
or  their  equivalent. 

"What  can  I  do  for  you  to-day?"  is  as  com- 
47 


SALESMANSHIP 

mon  a  phrase  in  retail  stores  as  "F.  O.  B. 
Factory"  in  a  manufacturer's  price  list.  I 
defy  any  one  to  say  to  me,  "What  can  I  do 
for  you  to-day?"  without  offending  me. 

What  can  a  retail  salesman  do  for  me?  Not 
a  darned  thing.  I  admit  he  is  doing  me  a  favor 
by  being  there  to  take  my  money  and  give  me 
what  I  want,  but  I  don't  like  to  be  reminded 
of  it.  I  like  to  feel  that  I  am  conferring  a 
favor  on  him.  I  could  go  elsewhere  or  I  could 
send  my  money  to  a  mail-order  house  and  en- 
joy all  of  the  sensations  of  a  man  who  has 
bought  a  lottery  ticket  or  advanced  railway 
fare  to  a  marriage-bureau  photograph,  and 
I  don't  want  a  merchant  or  his  clerk  to  talk 
as  if  he  were  renewing  a  note  for  me  when  I 
come  in  to  pay  cash  for  a  pair  of  suspenders. 

A  merchant  builds  his  shop,  arranges  his 
wares  and  advertises  them  for  the  purpose  of 
enticing  you  to  his  place  of  business.  You 
come  in  response  to  his  invitation,  and  then 
he  or  his  clerk  bristles  up  and  says,  "What 
can  I  do  for  you  to-day?"  in  a  manner  that 
nine  times  out  of  ten  seems  to  imply,  "What 

48 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

do  you  want  in  here?  Speak  quickly.  Time 
is  money  with  me."  Of  course  the  salesman 
does  n't  usually  mean  it  that  way,  and  the 
average  customer  does  n't  take  it  that  way, 
but  one  must  practice  a  good  deal  to  be  able 
to  say  "What  can  I  do  for  you  to-day?"  in 
an  essentially  different  way  from  "What  can 
I  do  for  you,  my  man, — or  my  good  woman?" 
Try  it. 

However,  the  real  objection  to  "What  can 
I  do  for  you  to-day?"  is  that  no  matter  how 
the  words  are  spoken  they  mark  bad  sales- 
manship. The  phrase  is  a  plate-glass-win- 
dowed, mahogany-fixtured,  clerk-unionized, 
and  ungrammatical  corruption  of  the  medi- 
aeval street-vender's  cry,  "What  do  ye  lack?" 
It  is  meant  to  signify  both  an  ability  and 
readiness  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  prospec- 
tive customer,  but  in  reality  expresses  a  doubt 
of  both.  Grammatically  and  psychologically 
it  should  be,  "What  may  I  do  for  you  to- 
day?" However,  that  amendment  does  not 
remove  the  objection  to  the  phrase.  The 
trouble  with  this  salutation  and  all  of  its  varia- 

49 


SALESMANSHIP 

tions,  such  as  "Something  to-day?"  "What 
may  I  show  you  ? "  "  Looking  for  something  ? " 
"Waited  upon?"  etc.,  is  that  the  salesman 
throws  away  an  advantage  when  he  uses 
them.  Some  real  or  fancied  need  has  sent  me 
in  quest  of  a  certain  article.  Advertising, 
habit,  convenience,  or  other  circumstance  di- 
rects me  to  a  particular  store.  The  sale  is  half 
made  before  I  enter  the  store.  This  is  true 
even  though  I  am  not  yet  ready  to  buy  and 
am  merely  looking  around.  I  have  a  keen  in- 
terest in  the  object  of  my  quest,  and  am  ready 
to  yield  an  absorbed  attention  to  the  article 
and  a  description  of  its  merits.  Compare  my 
attitude  with  that  which  the  wholesale  buyer 
ordinarily  assumes  toward  a  traveling  sales- 
man, and  it  is  apparent  that  I  have  produced 
in  myself  a  state  of  mind  that  the  traveling 
salesman  rarely  encounters  in  his  customers 
until  he  himself  has  created  it,  and  he  fails  in 
many  an  attempted  sale  because  he  can't 
create  it. 

I  walk  up  to  the  counter  with  a  mind  full  of 
interest  in  and  a  heart  full  of  desire  for  at  least 

50 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

one  article  of  merchandise.  I  have  no  inten- 
tion of  concealing  why  I  came.  I  am  ready  to 
make  a  clean  breast  of  the  whole  matter  as 
soon  as  I  can  get  the  attention  of  the  sales- 
man. All  he  has  to  do  is  to  bow  politely  and 
smile  and  say,  "Good-morning"  or  "Good- 
afternoon,"  and  then  I  will  say,  "I  want  to 
buy  a  stiff  hat,"  or  "Let  me  look  at  some 
shirt  patterns,"  —  just  like  that.  But  the 
salesman  does  n't  do  it  that  way.  He  does  n't 
take  it  for  granted  that  I've  come  in  to  buy 
something.  For  all  he  knows  I  may  have 
come  around  to  read  the  gas  meter,  and  if  I 
have  he  intends  to  tell  me  politely  but  firmly 
that  the  store  has  n't  used  gas  for  ten  years. 
Accordingly,  in  a  cold  and  dignified  way,  for 
it  does  n't  do  to  be  too  cordial  to  an  entire 
stranger,  he  asks  me,  "What  can  I  do  for  you 
to-day?"  It  has  almost  the  same  effect  as  the 
warning,  "Whatever  you  say  can  be  used 
against  you,"  that  the  British  constable  is 
supposed  to  mutter  as  he  fastens  the  hand- 
cuffs on  his  prisoner.  Instead  of  bubbling  over 
with  my  intended  confidences  concerning  the 


SALESMANSHIP 

thing  I  want  to  buy,  an  instinctive  caution 
curbs  my  tongue,  and  I  answer  with  a  vast 
assumption  of  indifference,  "Oh,  I  don't 
know;  you  might  let  me  look  at  a  stiff  hat; 
the  one  I  have  on  is  pretty  good  yet,  but  I 
may  get  a  new  hat  some  day." 

What  size,  what  price,  what  color,  what 
shape?  I  make  him  fight  for  every  necessary 
detail.  He  has  obscured  in  my  mind  the  fact 
that  I  came  in  expressly  to  buy  a  hat.  He  has 
injected  his  own  personality  into  the  matter 
and  made  it  a  personal  question  of  whether 
he  can  take  down  enough  boxes  and  brush  off 
enough  crowns  and  clap  enough  hats  on  my 
head  to  force  me  to  take  one  away  with  me, 
rather  than  feel  his  indignant  eyes  boring 
through  my  back  as  I  walk  out.  In  short,  it 
becomes  a  question  of  physical  endurance  on 
his  part  and  of  moral  courage  on  mine. 

I  may  have  seen  a  hat  in  the  window  that 
I  liked;  perhaps  a  friend  has  lately  bought  a 
hat  that  I  admire;  possibly  a  favored  shape  is 
current  in  the  magazine  advertisements.  All 
of  this  would  have  been  revealed  in  one  gener- 

5* 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

ous  burst  of  confidence  if  he  had  given  me  a 
chance.  Then  he  could  have  said:  "I  know 
exactly  what  you  want.  I  have  it  here  and  it's 
just  the  shape  for  you;  by  the  way,  what  size 
do  you  wear,  and  would  you  rather  have  it  in 
a  black  or  a  brown?  —  suppose  you  have  a 
look  at  both  —  seven  and  three  eighths  ?  Yes, 
sir,  I  have  it  in  both  colors  in  that  size." 

If  I  were  a  retail  salesman  I  would  learn  to 
bow  and  smile  and  say,  "Good-morning"  to 
my  customers  in  a  way  to  show  without  words 
that  I  was  ready  to  move  mountains  for  them. 
I  would  n't  ask  a  customer  what  he  wanted. 
I  'd  wait  for  him  to  tell  me,  and  meanwhile  I  'd 
observe  his  appearance,  speech,  and  manner 
to  get  the  right  cue  for  my  first  remark. 

Something  has  brought  your  customer  to  the 
store.  He  is  partly  sold  when  he  walks  up  to 
your  counter.  The  advertising  department, 
the  window-trimmer,  the  location  of  the  store, 
previous  dealings  with  the  concern,  some 
force  or  circumstance  has  delivered  him  to 
you  in  this  partly  sold  condition.  When  you 
see  him  coming,  you  don't  know  how  close  to 

S3 


SALESMANSHIP 

the  buying  point  he  is,  but  if  you  let  him  tell 
what  he  wants  in  his  own  way,  without  be- 
fogging the  situation  by  needlessly  asking  him 
what  you  can  do  for  him,  the  chances  are  that 
his  remarks  and  manner  will  give  you  a  pretty 
good  idea  of  how  far  he  has  progressed  toward 
a  determination  to  buy  the  article  about  which 
he  inquires. 

A  salesman's  talk  during  business  hours 
should  be  selling  talk,  and  outside  of  a  single 
word  of  respectful  greeting,  a  retail  salesman's 
first  remark  to  a  customer  with  whom  he  has 
no  acquaintance  should  be  something  that 
will  further  the  sale  of  the  article  in  which 
the  customer  expresses  interest.  This  remark 
should  come  as  soon  as  the  customer  has 
stated  what  he  wants.  If  he  has  named  a 
specific  choice  of  brand  or  style,  or  both,  and 
you  have  the  line  and  are  sure  you  can  fit  him, 
if  it  is  an  article  where  fit  figures,  there  is 
nothing  to  do  but  express  commendation  of 
his  selection,  ask  his  size,  and  show  him  the 
goods.  This  is  even  true  if  the  line  he  asks  for 
is  in  competition  with  another  line  you  are 

54 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

trying  to  push.  The  time  to  show  a  man  a 
brand  that's  "just  as  good"  —  or  better  — 
than  the  brand  he  has  asked  for  is  after  you  Ve 
shown  him  what  he 's  asked  for  —  if  you  have 
it.  And  don't  withhold  your  commendation 
of  the  line  he  asked  for  just  because  you  in- 
tend to  try  to  kill  its  sale.  When  a  customer 
asks  for  the  X  Y  Z  brand,  show  it  to  him  and 
praise  it  as  much  as  it  deserves;  then  bring 
out  the  ABC  brand  which  you  are  pushing 
and  praise  it  as  hard  as  it  deserves.  Generally 
this  method  will  get  more  consideration  than 
any  other  for  your  ABC  brand,  and  it  has  the 
obvious  virtue  of  not  imperiling  the  sale  of 
X  Y  Z  or  offending  the  customer  if  he  is  a 
partisan  of  the  latter  brand. 

Suppose,  however,  you  don't  carry  the 
brand  asked  for?  Will  you  disparage  it,  damn 
it  with  faint  praise,  or  heartily  commend  it? 
From  the  standpoint  of  the  buyer,  I  should 
say  commend  it  before  you  show  the  brand 
you  do  carry.  But  you  should  be  very  quick 
on  the  trigger  with  the  strong  points  about 
the  brand  you  carry.  It  should  be  remem- 

55 


SALESMANSHIP 

bered  that  the  immediate  sale  is  not  the  only 
thing  at  stake.  There  is  the  reputation  of  the 
house  to  consider.  "We  don't  handle  that 
brand"  is  a  damaging  admission  to  make  un- 
less, without  disparaging  it,  you  can  show 
why  you  have  something  as  good  or  better. 

Personally  I  don't  think  much  of  the  "just 
as  good"  argument.  There  are  mighty  few 
dead  heats  at  the  race-track,  and  there  are 
mighty  few  persons  or  things  of  exactly  equal 
quality.  I  don't  know  of  any  two  brands  of 
any  article  that  are  equally  good.  If  your 
house  carries  one  in  preference  to  the  other, 
you  have  a  right  to  believe  it  is  the  better,  and 
it  is  up  to  you  to  dig  up  facts  that  will  support 
your  belief. 

Going  back  to  our  customer,  let  us  assume 
he  asks  for  a  given  article  without  naming  any 
brand  or  style.  This  leaves  you  perfectly  free 
to  try  to  sell  him  what  you  like,  but  it  also 
leaves  him  equally  free  to  say,  "  Thank  you 
for  your  trouble;  I  believe  I'll  look  a  little 
farther."  In  such  a  case,  before  any  goods 
are  shown,  I  think  something  should  be  said 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

to  link  up  the  personality  of  the  prospective 
buyer  with  the  article  about  to  be  shown.  As- 
sume that  a  man  in  a  brown  suit  inquires  about 
cravats.  The  salesman  says,  "I  have  a  new 
brown  here  — a  distinct  novelty  —  and  it 
would  be  perfect  with  that  suit  you  're  wearing 
now."  Perhaps  that  won't  sell  the  brown 
cravat,  but  it  will  make  it  mighty  hard  for  the 
customer  to  leave  without  buying  some  kind 
of  cravat.  Suppose,  instead  of  a  cravat,  it's  a 
hat  the  customer  is  after.  The  clerk  says,  "We 
have  a  shape  here  —  one  of  our  latest  —  that 
I  believe  will  set  off  your  profile  exactly." 
Who  could  help  getting  interested  in  the  hats 
of  a  concern  which  took  such  an  intelligent 
and  flattering  interest  in  the  appearance  of  its 
patrons  ? 

Perhaps  a  bride  and  groom  come  into  a 
furniture  store  and  say,  "We  want  to  look  at 
a  dining-room  suite."  Instead  of  asking  a  long 
rigmarole  of  questions  about  what  they  want 
until  they  feel  like  alibi  witnesses  under  cross- 
examination,  suppose  the  salesman  says,  "I 
want  you  to  let  me  show  you  one  or  two 

57 


SALESMANSHIP 

examples  of  what  we  are  doing  in  the  Periods, 
and  then  we'll  look  at  some  of  our  other  spe- 
cialties." They  may  wonder  what  year  Chip- 
pendale played  on  the  Carlisle  football  team 
and  whether  Sheraton  in  his  day  was  as  good 
a  horse  as  Whisk  Broom  II,  but,  nevertheless, 
I  am  sure  it  will  be  easier  to  sell  them  that 
special  $40  golden  oak  set  and  harder  for  them 
to  break  away  and  go  up  the  street  to  Solo- 
mon's, if  the  salesman  pays  them  the  compli- 
ment of  talking  about  the  "Schools"  and 
drops  gracefully  down  to  that  ever  smart  and 
sensible  stand-by,  "Golden  Oak"  in  "Grand 
Rapids  Renaissance."  Besides,  there  is  al- 
ways the  chance  that  they  will  take  the  rubber 
band  off  the  bank  roll  opposite  one  of  the 
"Louies." 

Maybe  a  sturdy  stranger  comes  into  a  hard- 
ware store  and  wants  to  buy  a  hoe.  There 
is  n't  any  difference  in  the  piston  displace- 
ment of  hoes,  except  as  measured  by  their 
width  and  depth,  but  there  is  a  tremendous 
difference  in  the  way  hoes  act.  Some  hoes 
"scour"  without  a  bit  of  trouble;  others  re- 

58 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

quire  a  long  course  of  treatment.  Some  have 
handles  that  seem  to  balance  in  your  hands 
and  hurl  a  menace  at  every  weed  in  Christen- 
dom. Others  are  as  unwieldy  as  a  flatboat's 
sweep.  The  selection  of  a  polo  mallet  or  golf 
club  is  n't  a  mite  more  momentous  than  the 
selection  of  a  hoe,  for  the  man  who  is  far 
enough  over  in  the  book  to  come  in  and  per- 
sonally select  his  hoe  is  just  as  much  of  a 
sportsman  as  the  poloist  or  golfist.  Then  why 
not  recognize  the  niceties  of  hoecraft  and 
say,  "  I  know  just  what  you  want  —  a  really 
good  hoe  —  one  that  will  scour  and  that  has 
a  perfectly  balanced  handle.  Try  this  one." 
Your  customer  is  not  only  going  to  buy  a  hoe, 
but  he  is  also  going  away  with  the  conviction 
that  you  and  your  store  know  how  to  cater  to 
true  hoe-lovers. 

Some  one  speaks  up  and  asks,  "How  about 
the  stickers?"  There  is  a  very  simple  answer 
to  that  question.  In  the  first  place,  what  is  a 
sticker?  A  sticker  is  something  you  can't  talk 
about  to  some  one  in  a  way  to  make  "your 
talk  stick,"  as  they  say  on  Forty-fourth 

59 


SALESMANSHIP 

Street.  What  is  one  man's  meat  is  another 
man's  poison,  and  the  other  way  around. 
What  you  would  n't  buy  because  it's  out  of 
fashion  or  crudely  colored,  I  might  purchase 
because  I  don't  like  the  prevailing  fashions  or 
do  like  something  odd.  Salesmanship  never 
fears  stickers.  In  fact,  stickers  don't  thrive 
around  salesmanship. 

'  Speaking  of  stickers,  there  is  a  hotel  on 
Broadway  at  —  but  no,  for  it  is  the  only  hotel 
at  that  corner.  Anyway  there  is  a  certain 
hotel  at  which  I  frequently  lunch  and  am  in- 
variably served  by  one  of  two  waiters.  One 
is  a  German  who,  for  example,  will  say,  in  a 
matter-of-fact  way,  "Do  you  vant  some  curry 
of  chicken  to-day?"  I  immediately  reply, 
"Curry  of  chicken,  eh?  That's  the  dish 
you're  pushing  to-day,  is  it?  No  curry  of 
chicken  for  mine;  fetch  me  a  piece  of  roast 
beef."  The  other  waiter  is  a  Swiss.  His 
method  would  be  to  remark  solicitously  as 
if  to  spur  my  flagging  appetite,  "Ah,  mon- 
sieur, you  are  not  very  hungry  —  something 
delicate  —  yet  with  piquancy  —  and  nourish- 

60 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

ment.  Let  me  fetch  you  some  of  the  curry  of 
chicken."  And  I  would  say,  "Yes,  I  guess 
that's  what  I  want."  In  other  words,  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  sticker  if  the  article  is  an 
honest  article  —  and  no  good  salesman  should 
soil  his  hands  with  a  dishonest  article. 

Perhaps  some  salesman  who  lives  in  a  small 
town  and  knows  everyone  who  comes  into  the 
store  will  say,  "Your  ideas  of  handling  a  cus- 
tomer may  be  all  right  in  a  large  city,  but  they 
don't  apply  in  my  town,  where  I  know  every- 
body, and  they  would  talk  me  to  death  if  I 
did  n't  break  in  and  ask  them  whether  they 
want  to  buy  anything." 

A  community  where  the  salesman  knows 
everybody  — or  nearly  everybody  —  is  a 
place  where  he  can't  aiford  to  alienate  a  cus- 
tomer, for  customers  are  too  few.  No  dis- 
courtesy sinks  deeper  or  rankles  longer  than 
the  busy  signal.  If  Deacon  Pettijohn  is  trying 
to  tell  you  how  that  May  rain  made  him  three 
tons  of  clover  to  the  acre  when  in  April  he 
did  n't  think  he  would  get  over  half  a  ton,  it 
will  pay  you  to  listen  to  him  until  he  gets 
61 


SALESMANSHIP 

through.  Don't  scare  him  off  by  asking  him 
what  he  wants,  for  he  may  be  figuring  on  buy- 
ing a  clover  huller,  and  who  would  feel  like 
buying  a  clover  huller  from  a  salesman  who 
breaks  in  on  one's  story  and  says,  "What  can 
I  do  for  you  to-day?"  There  are  only  two 
reasons  why  you  should  n't  listen  to  Deacon 
Pettijohn.  One  is  because  you  want  to  wrap 
up  ten  cents'  worth  of  tenpenny  nails  that  old 
Squire  Scoggins  will  call  for  after  the  five- 
o'clock  train  gets  in,  and  the  other  is  because 
somebody  else  is  waiting  to  be  waited  on.  In 
the  long  run  Squire  Scoggins's  nails  are  not  so 
important  as  Deacon  Pettijohn's  clover  crop, 
and,  anyway,  you  '11  probably  have  plenty  of 
time  to  get  the  nails  ready  before  the  squire 
gets  back.  And  even  if  you  don't,  the  chances 
are  the  old  squire  will  be  content  to  wait  and 
gossip  while  you're  weighing  out  the  nails. 
Don't  let  an  order-filler's  job  interfere  with 
a  salesman's  career. 

But  suppose  somebody  else  is  waiting  while 
the  deacon  rambles  on  about  his  clover.  In 
the  first  place,  since  you  know  the  deacon  as 

62 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

well  as  you  do,  the  probabilities  are,  the  fel- 
lows who  are  waiting  know  him  quite  as  well. 
They  may  be  interested  in  what  he  says,  for 
such  is  the  way  of  people  in  a  community 
where  everybody  knows  everybody  else.  Any- 
way, there  is  a  way  of  telling  people  that 
they're  next  and  keeping  them  pacified  with- 
out saying  a  word.  If  you  have  ever  been 
pantomimed  on  to  the  waiting-list  of  a  barber 
shop  by  an  Italian  head  barber,  you  know  that 
this  is  true.  Don't  worry  about  Deacon  Petti- 
john :  let  him  ramble  on.  He  may  have  to  buy 
something  to  put  the  proper  climax  in  his 
story.  It  always  pays  to  humor  a  customer, 
and  it  never  pays  to  try  to  rush  a  retail  cus- 
tomer until  you  get  his  nose  in  the  gate.  If 
you  ever  tried  to  drive  a  pig  into  a  pen  you 
know  what  I  mean.  I  have  been  rushed  and 
I  act  like  a  pig  —  or  worse. 

Doubling  back  on  my  tracks,  let  me  pick  up 
a  point  that  I  failed  to  get  down  in  its  proper 
place.  Judging  from  my  own  experience  as  a 
shopper,  every  shop  and  every  salesman  has 
to  deal  frequently  with  people  who  want  a  cer- 

63 


SALESMANSHIP 

tain  style  (not  brand)  that  is  n't  in  the  store. 
To  illustrate:  Last  summer  the  choking  col- 
lapse of  a  starched  collar  inspired  me  with  the 
idea  of  buying  some  of  those  soft,  unstarched 
collars  that  for  several  years,  at  intervals, 
have  bid  for  public  favor  and  offered  the  al- 
ternatives of  safety  pins  or  linked  buttons  as 
a  method  of  draping  their  clinging  comfort 
around  one's  Adam's  apple.  Safety  pins  are 
not  safe  in  the  hands  of  any  man,  and  the 
linked  buttons  which  a  valetless  man  has  to 
coax  into  his  dress-shirt  are  likely  to  prejudice 
him  against  the  entire  species.  Therefore, 
when  the  collar  manufacturers  came  out  this 
summer  with  a  soft  collar  that  required  neither 
safety  pins  nor  links,  and  looked  perfectly 
stunning  as  demonstrated  by  the  appearance 
of  the  modernized  Lord  Byrons  whose  por- 
traits appeared  in  the  advertisements,  why 
should  n't  any  one  rush  to  his  favorite  haber- 
dasher and  ask  for  a  half  a  dozen.  No  reason 
in  the  world  why  he  should  n't  —  and  I  did. 
I  went  to  a  place  in  New  York  which  even  the 
Evanston  people  admit  is  as  good  as  any  store 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

in  Chicago,  and  is  constantly  quoted  to  settle 
necktie  and  pa  jama  arguments  as  far  west  as 
Cleveland.  Would  you  believe  it,  this  store 
did  n't  have  a  single  one  of  these  new  soft 
collars.  The  only  kind  of  soft  collars  they  had 
was  the  kind  that  pins  together  with  a  safety 
pin.  They  could  make  anything  I  wanted  by 
the  end  of  a  week.  Meanwhile  I  could  go  with- 
out a  collar  if  I  wanted  to  avoid  a  chafed  neck. 
The  latter  suggestion  was  not  put  into  words, 
but  as  a  practical  man  I  could  see  that  the 
proposition  figured  out  something  like  that. 

Being  also  a  man  of  action,  and  no  effort 
having  been  made  to  disabuse  my  mind  of  the 
idea,  I  continued  my  search  until  I  found  the 
pinless  and  linkless  variety.  I  bought  some, 
but  I  have  n't  worn  them  much,  for  I  can't 
get  them  to  hug  my  neck  the  way  they  cling 
to  the  necks  of  the  men  in  the  advertisements. 
Instead  of  that  they  spraddle  out  and  make 
me  look  like  Abraham  Lincoln  around  the 
gullet  without  causing  any  of  the  rest  of  me  to 
resemble  the  great  emancipator.  Now  I  am 
pretty  sure  that  the  salesman  in  the  first  shop 

65 


SALESMANSHIP 

at  which  I  called  knew  exactly  what  sort  of 
experience  I  would  have  with  the  pinless  and 
linkless  collars.  He  could  have  sold  me  $3 
worth  of  the  other  kind  and  a  $2.50  safety  pin 
if  he  had  tried.  My  wilted  linen  collar  and  my 
obvious  air  of  discomfort  told  as  plainly  as 
words  that  I  wanted  to  experience  the  com- 
fort of  a  soft  collar  immediately.  Suppose  he 
had  said:  "Those  pinless  and  linkless  collars 
are  great  for  any  one  who  likes  to  wear  a 
detachable  collar  at  tennis,  golf,  or  yachting; 
also,  some  people  prefer  them  to  a  stock  in 
summer-time  for  horseback  riding.  We  make 
them  to  order,  and  we  can  have  some  ready 
for  you  by  the  week-end,  but  if  you  want 
something  to  wear  to  business  during  this 
sultry  weather  I'd  suggest  the  collars  that  pin 
together,  because  the  others  seem  to  give 
better  satisfaction  for  outing  use  than  street 
wear."  It  may  sound  foolish,  but  I  would 
actually  have  fallen  for  that  line  of  talk;  I 
really  would,  and  the  chap  who  was  along 
with  me  would  have  fallen  for  it,  too,  —  he 
admits  it. 

66 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

It  has  taken  a  dreadfully  long  time  to  tell 
about  this  trivial  incident  of  the  soft  collars, 
but  the  time  has  not  been  wasted  if  the  inci- 
dent serves  to  illustrate  how  easy  and  yet  how 
important  it  is  to  explain  —  without  seeming 
to  explain  —  why  you  don't  carry  a  certain 
style  of  a  given  article.  It  all  gets  back  to 
knowing  your  book,  as  the  actors  call  it,  and 
I  want  to  talk  about  that  again  a  few  para- 
graphs further  on. 

Speaking  of  this  shop  where  I  did  n't  buy 
the  soft  collars,  I  have  observed  a  most  curi- 
ous state  of  affairs  therein.  The  store  building 
was  apparently  at  one  time  what  they  would 
call  in  St.  Paul  a  "Duplex."  In  other  words, 
it  was  meant  to  be  two  stores,  but  was  finally 
condensed  into  one.  The  dividing  wall  be- 
tween the  two  storerooms  has  retreated  about 
fifteen  feet  from  the  entrance  and  yields  a 
similar  passageway  at  the  rear.  There  is  as 
much  difference  between  the  right  and  left 
hand  sides  of  this  wall  as  there  is  between  the 
climate  in  Medicine  Hat  and  Mobile.  Upon 
entering  the  shop,  if  you  turn  to  the  right, 

67 


SALESMANSHIP 

you  feel,  and  are  treated,  a  good  deal  as  if  you 
were  trying  to  loaf  around  a  club  to  which 
you  did  n't  belong. 

The  salesmen  on  the  right-hand  side  of  the 
dividing  wall  act  like  a  bunch  of  "we  Harvard 
fellows,"  and  appear  to  have  a  certain  amount 
of  contempt  for  anybody  who  wants  to  spend 
his  money  with  their  employer.  On  the  other 
hand  —  that  is  to  say,  on  the  left-hand  side 
of  the  wall  —  the  salesmen  seem  to  appreciate 
it  when  you  come  in,  and  are  about  as  com- 
petent a  lot  of  retail  salesmen  as  you  will  or- 
dinarily find.  I  have  bought  a  good  many 
dollars'  worth  of  merchandise  on  the  left-hand 
side,  but  only  one  dollar's  worth  on  the  right- 
hand  side.  The  salesmen  probably  migrate 
from  one  side  to  the  other  as  promotions  occur 
or  stress  of  trade  requires  it,  but  the  charac- 
teristic atmosphere  on  each  side  of  the  wall 
remains  unchanged.  At  least,  my  observa- 
tions during  the  past  five  years,  based  on  visits 
so  frequent  as  to  exclude  the  theory  of  coin- 
cidence, have  marked  no  change. 

I  mention  the  foregoing,  to  me  curious,  fact 
68 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

because  I  believe  it  illustrates  a  vital  prob- 
lem of  retail  salesmanship,  namely,  the  tend- 
ency of  retail  salesmen  to  adopt  unconsciously 
the  traditions  that  hover  over  the  counters 
they  serve,  and  envelop  the  particular  kind  of 
merchandise  they  happen  to  be  selling.  Or 
perhaps  it  is  a  phase  of  self-consciousness 
which  prompts  them  to  be  no  more  eager, 
original,  alert,  or  courteous  than  their  co- 
workers  or  predecessors.  I  should  say  that 
the  kernel  of  the  matter  is  this :  a  retail  sales- 
man ought  to  forget  that  he  belongs  to  a  class 
of,  let  us  say,  overworked,  underpaid  wage- 
earners,  and  remember  that  he  is  an  individ- 
ual human  being,  whose  success  depends  on 
his  ability  to  interest,  please,  and  influence 
other  people. 

A  retail  salesman  is  really  one  of  the  luckiest 
fellows  alive.  He  is  paid  to  take  a  course  of 
instruction  that  Yale  or  Harvard  could  n't  give 
him  at  any  price,  and  if  he  wastes  his  oppor- 
tunities he  is  just  as  much  a  ne'er-do-well  as 
the  college  boy  who  divides  his  time  in  equal 
portions  between  New  York  and  New  Haven- 

69 


SALESMANSHIP 

Knowledge  is  everything.  A  man  can't  go 
very  far  wrong  on  a  subject  he  knows  a  lot 
about  —  and  he  can  always  make  an  impres- 
sion when  he  talks  about  it. 

A  one-legged  man  who  has  studied  foot- 
racing carefully  and  conscientiously  can  hold 
the  attention  and  interest  of  any  ten-second 
performer  who  ever  broke  a  tape.  A  retail 
salesman  should  know  intimately  all  of  the 
goods  in  his  department.  His  department  may 
be  the  entire  store  or  it  may  be  only  a  ten-foot 
section  of  the  store  —  that  makes  no  differ- 
ence. 

I  wonder  how  many  retail  salesmen  really 
try  to  know  all  they  can  about  the  articles 
they  sell.  If  the  manufacturers'  catalogues 
don't  give  all  of  the  information  desired,  or  if 
the  salesman  can't  boil  down  from  a  catalogue 
the  few  pregnant  remarks  he  wants  to  make 
in  regard  to  a  certain  article,  all  he  has  to  do 
is  to  send  a  post-card  to  the  particular  manu- 
facturer concerned  and  say,  "What  do  you 
think  I  should  say  when  I  put  your  goods  on 
the  counter  before  a  prospective  buyer?'* 

70 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

Manufacturers  who  buy  space  to  tell  about 
their  products  in  "Collier's"  and  other  mag- 
azines have  certainly  learned  how  to  make 
the  strongest  selling  arguments  in  the  fewest 
words.  They  ought  to  be  glad,  and  most  of 
them  are  glad,  to  tell  any  retail  salesman  what 
they  think  should  be  said  to  the  consumer 
about  their  goods. 

Fancy  an  actor  going  on  to  play  a  part  with- 
out knowing  the  lines  or  having  any  idea  of 
the  author's  conception  of  the  part.  Yet  the 
equivalent  of  this  is  what  retail  salesmen  hab- 
itually do.  Of  course  it's  all  right  if  a  man 
is  satisfied  with  his  job  and  his  pay,  and  can 
hold  both  at  the  gait  he's  going.  But  if  a  chap 
wants  to  get  on  and  up,  there's  no  quicker  or 
surer  way  than  learning  the  most  convincing 
talking  points  about  the  goods  he  sells.  To 
say  that  goods  are  "good  goods"  does  n't  con- 
vince the  most  credulous,  but  the  reason  why 
they  are  goodwill  convince  the  most  skeptical. 

This  is  an  age  of  commerce,  but  it  is  also 
an  age  of  interesting  industrial  stories.  Take 
pocket-knives  for  example.  Every  man  loves 


SALESMANSHIP 

a  good  knife;  yet  how  few  high-priced  knives 
are  sold  out  of  the  hardware  stores.  There  is 
a  knife  made  over  in  England  that  nearly 
every  first-class  American  hardware  store  car- 
ries in  stock.  I  say  carries  in  stock  advis- 
edly, for  they  rarely  sell  any.  This  knife  is 
one  of  the  few  that  has  a  hand-forged  blade. 
You  can  see  the  marks  of  the  hand-forging 
around  the  hilt  —  if  a  clever  salesman  points 
it  out.  Over  in  the  English  town  where  these 
knives  are  made  the  men  who  work  in  the 
knife  factory  are  recognized  at  a  glance  by 
the  bulging  muscles  of  their  right  arms  and 
shoulders,  which  show  plainly  through  their 
jackets  —  and  must  be  the  despair  of  their 
tailors,  if  tailors  they  have.  Isn't  there  a  great 
selling  story  in  this?  There  surely  is,  but  I'll 
wager  no  knife-buyer  ever  heard  it  unless  he 
has  bought  a  knife  from  my  friend  Tom  Wil- 
liams, of  Toronto,  who  told  the  story  to  me. 
For  the  life  of  me  I  don't  know  why  a  hand- 
forged  blade  will  sharpen  lead  pencils  or  trim 
boot-thongs  any  better  than  any  other  kind  of 
blade,  but  hanged  if  I  would  n't  buy  a  hand- 

72 


OVER-THE-COUNTER  SALES 

forged  blade  in  preference  to  any  other  kind, 
if  I  had  the  price  —  and  so  would  lots  of  other 
charter  members  of  the  great  American  buy- 
ing public. 

There  is  one  more  point  to  be  considered: 
How  are  you  going  to  tell  what  you  know? 
You  become  letter  perfect  in  what  you  want 
to  tell  your  customer  about  a  certain  article. 
You  can  do  that  easily  enough,  but  are  you 
sure  you  can  tell  your  story  in  the  most  con- 
vincing way?  If  I  were  a  retail  salesman,  I 
would  n't  be  ashamed  to  practice  before  the 
mirror.  Better  men  than  I  have  done  it  in 
less  worthy  causes.  And  if  I  had  the  chance, 
I  'd  spill  all  of  my  talk  into  the  recording  horn 
of  a  phonograph  and  listen  to  the  phonograph 
while  it  told  me  how  bad  a  salesman  I  am. 
I'd  keep  doing  that  until  I  had  improved. 


Ill 

f  "ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY?" 

"Now  that  you  ask  his  name  I  can't  think 
of  it  to  save  my  life,  although  I  know  the  name 
almost  as  well  as  I  know  my  own."  I  wonder 
if  you  have  ever  had  to  make  that  admission 
to  any  one  or  whether  any  one  has  ever  made 
it  to  you.  Point-blank  questions  that  call  for 
an  immediate  and  specific  answer  sometimes 
have  a  queer  way  of  defeating  their  own  pur- 
pose. 

When  a  tearful  little  boy  is  sent  back  to 
the  grocery  store  by  his  indignant  mother 
because  he  forgot  to  get  anything  but  sugar, 
although  she  had  expressly  instructed  him  to 
fetch  both  sugar  and  tea,  it  is  my  belief  that 
nine  times  out  of  ten  the  grocer  is  to  blame. 

It  was  n't  the  ball-game  with  those  boys 
over  on  the  next  street,  as  menacingly  charged 
by  his  mother,  that  drove  the  tea  out  of  the 
little  boy's  mind.  It  was  n't  that  at  all.  It  was 

74 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

because  the  grocer,  after  expertly  snapping 
off  the  wrapping-string  and  giving  a  final  affec- 
tionate pat  to  the  package  of  sugar,  peered 
over  his  spectacles  and  said  to  the  little  boy, 
"Is  there  anything  else  to-day?"  The  little 
boy  probably  scratched  his  head,  scraped  his 
feet  on  the  floor,  and  tried  to  think  very  hard. 
Meanwhile  the  grocer  drummed  the  counter 
with  his  fingers  and  acted  as  if  he  'd  like  to  get 
rid  of  the  little  boy,  so  he  could  go  back  be- 
hind the  flour  sacks  and  hunt  for  "fresh-laid 
eggs"  with  a  candling  outfit  or  look  over  the 
canned  goods  and  pick  out  the  "swells"  which 
the  jobber's  salesman  had  authorized  him  to 
ship  back  for  credit.  Finally  the  little  boy's 
memory  went  absolutely  blank  and  he  said 
faintly,  "No,  sir,  I  guess  that's  all." 

Suppose  the  grocer  had  pushed  the  sugar 
across  the  counter  and  said,  "There's  the 
sugar;  now  I  wonder  what  else  your  mother 
wants  to-day."  The  little  boy  would  prob- 
ably have  said,  "Oh,  gee,  I  'most  forgot.  She 
said  some  tea,  too;  the  kind  she  always  gets." 

Perhaps  you  don't  believe  it  would  have 
75 


SALESMANSHIP 

made  any  difference.  Perhaps  you  think  the 
little  boy  would  have  forgotten  the  tea,  any- 
way. I  can't  prove  my  contention  and  you 
can't  prove  yours,  so  there  is  plenty  of  room 
for  argument.  Most  arguments  start  about 
things  that  can't  be  proved  at  the  time  and 
place  of  the  argument. 

My  argument  is  that  the  question,  "  Is  there 
anything  else  to-day?"  when  addressed  to  a 
little  boy,  is  not  a  suggestive  question,  while 
"I  wonder  what  else  your  mother  wants  to- 
day" raises  a  vision  of  the  little  boy's  mamma 
in  the  little  boy's  mind  and  causes  him  to  re- 
construct in  detail  just  what  she  said  to  him. 
He  remembers  that  he  was  going  out  through 
the  back  gate  with  his  catching-glove  in  his 
hand,  when  his  mother  called  to  him  from  the 
kitchen  window.  He  remembers  how  regret- 
fully he  retraced  his  steps.  He  remembers 
that  his  mother  said,  "  Jimmie,  I  want  you  to 
run  down  to  the  grocery."  Mothers  nearly 
always  ask  their  little  boys  to  run  when  going 
to  the  grocery  store,  but  disapprove  of  "old 
cat"  because  there  is  "so  much  running  in  it." 

76 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

Now  let's  see.  What  else  did  she  say?  Oh, 
yes.  "The  grocer  did  n't  send  up  any  sugar 
this  morning  and  there  is  n't  any  tea  for 
luncheon.  Run  down  and  get  five  pounds  of 
sugar  and  a  pound  of  tea."  That  was  it.  No 
tea  for  luncheon  and  no  sugar  to  put  in  the 
tea.  Careless  of  mother  to  run  out  of  tea  and 
sugar,  and  chase  a  guy  down  to  the  store  when 
all  the  other  fellows  are  playing  ball,  but  that's 
what  she  wanted  —  sugar  and  tea. 

Any  good  lawyer  will  agree  that  it  is  ordi- 
narily easier  to  cross-examine  the  witnesses  of 
the  other  side  than  to  conduct  the  "examina- 
tion-in-chief"  of  your  own  witnesses.  In 
other  words,  it  is  easier  to  question  people  and 
confuse  them,  make  them  forget,  get  them  to 
say  what  they  don't  mean,  and  tangle  them 
up  generally,  than  it  is  to  ask  questions  that 
will  bring  out  what  they  really  know.  When 
a  lawyer  is  examining  one  of  his  own  witnesses 
and  the  lawyer  on  the  other  side  objects  to 
a  certain  question  on  the  ground  that  it  is 
"leading  and  suggestive  of  the  answer  sought," 
the  objection  defines  in  legal  phrase  the  most 

77 


SALESMANSHIP 

effective  kind  of  question  that  can  be  framed; 
but  the  makers  of  the  rules  of  evidence,  dis- 
trusting lawyers  and  witnesses  alike,  have 
decided  that  a  lawyer  must  as  far  as  possible 
be  prevented  from  suggesting  to  his  own  wit- 
nesses by  the  form  of  his  questions  the  an- 
swers that  he  seeks.  This  is  no  doubt  a  very 
wise  rule,  so  far  as  lawyers  and  witnesses  are 
concerned,  but  it  is  not  in  force  outside  of 
court-rooms,  although  one  might  be  led  to 
believe  that  retail  merchants  are  bound  by 
the  same  rule.  "Is  there  anything  else  to- 
day?" or  "What  else?"  are  not  leading  ques- 
tions, nor  are  they  suggestive  questions.  On 
the  contrary,  they  are  questions  that  conform 
strictly  to  the  rules  of  evidence.  They  are 
questions  that  give  you  no  aid  in  framing 
your  answers  to  them.  Spoken,  as  they  usually 
are,  in  the  same  tempo  as  a  subway  guard's 
"Step  lively,  please,"  they  are  more  likely  to 
make  you  forget  than  remember  whether  there 
is  anything  else  and  if  there  is,  what  it  is. 

"Is  there  anything  else  to-day?"  is  my  idea 
of  a  perfectly  useless  question,  and  certainly  a 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

useless  question  should  never  be  propounded 
to  a  customer.  The  human  mind  is  instinct- 
ively resentful  of  questions.  Even  a  besotted 
and  shameless  drink  "moodier"  would  rather 
have  his  victim  say,  "  Come  on  and  take  some- 
thing," than  be  required  to  answer  the  speci- 
fic question,  "Will  you  have  a  drink?"  Ever 
since  there  has  been  a  language  in  which  to 
ask  them,  questions  have  frequently  been  the 
forerunners  of  trouble  for  mankind.  From  the 
somber  question  which  the  trial  judge  asks  as 
he  adjusts  his  black  cap  and  tells  the  con- 
victed murderer  to  stand  up  —  from  that  kind 
of  question  down  to  the  icy  interrogation, 
"What  time  was  it  when  you  came  in  last 
night?"  there  are  and  have  always  been  thous- 
ands of  questions  of  ominous  import.  We 
human  beings  have  inherited  an  animal-like 
question-wary  instinct  that  invariably  dis- 
turbs in  some  degree  the  normal  operation  of 
our  mental  processes  when  we  are  asked  a 
question,  no  matter  how  innocent  the  ques- 
tion nor  how  great  our  readiness  to  answer  it 
fully  and  truthfully.  Of  course,  I  have  never 

79 


SALESMANSHIP 

fooked  into  a  human  brain  as  it  was  summoned 
to  activity  by  a  question,  but  I  imagine  that 
the  brain  thoughts  come  tumbling  out  to  de- 
fend the  requested  information  much  as  the 
soldiers  of  a  beleaguered  city  turn  out  of  their 
barracks  to  repel  a  night  attack.  While  the 
more  nimble  brain  thoughts  are  rushing  out  to 
reconnoiter  the  question  and  give  battle  if  it 
seems  unfriendly,  memory  is  likely  enough  to 
become  panic-stricken  in  the  midst  of  the  con- 
fusion and  hide  the  answer  where  it  can't  be 
found  by  the  other  brain  thoughts  if  they  de- 
cide to  let  the  question  have  it.  The  foregoing 
is  rather  fantastic  and  probably  rather  silly, 
but  it  is  a  fact  that  a  point-blank,  your- 
money-or-your-life  question  will  frequently 
upset  the  normal  working  of  the  questioned 
person's  mind  and  render  him  at  least  tem- 
porarily unable  to  make  an  adequate  reply. 
Sometimes  that  is  the  very  thing  you  want  to 
accomplish,  and  when  it  is,  there  can  be  no 
quarrel  with  the  question  that  brings  about 
the  desired  result.  Such  questions  correspond 
in  purpose  to  a  lawyer's  cross-examination, 

80 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

and  have  a  very  limited  field  of  usefulness  in 
retail  salesmanship. 

"Is  there  anything  else  today"  can  scarcely 
be  regarded  as  an  alarming  or  confusing  ques- 
tion, yet  I  must  confess  that  several  times 
when  I  have  stood  at  the  counter,  ransacking 
my  memory  for  a  mislaid  mental  shopping- 
list,  this  question,  crisply  put,  has  obliterated 
the  last  vestige  of  my  recollection  of  the  un- 
purchased  articles,  and  I  have  as  crisply  re- 
plied, "No,  that's  all."  Perhaps  at  the  next 
corner  I  would  be  able  to  recall  the  other 
things  I  had  intended  to  buy  —  with  resulting 
profit  to  the  merchant  on  that  corner. 

There  is  another  minor  objection  to  the 
absurd  question  "Is  there  anything  else  to- 
day" that  I  think  we  should  consider  before 
we  pass  on  to  the  great  big  unanswerable  ob- 
jection. When  you  ask  a  man  whether  he 
wants  anything  else,  it  is  merely  an  unintel- 
ligent way  of  asking  him  whether  he  has  any 
more  money  he  would  like  to  spend.  There 
are  few  stronger  human  impulses  than  the 
impulse  to  decline  a  perfunctory  invitation  to 

81 


SALESMANSHIP 

spend  money.  Just  the  other  day  I  half-un- 
consciously  answered,  "No,  nothing  else," 
when  a  salesman  briskly  inquired,  "What 
else?"  although  it  was  necessary  to  correct 
myself  immediately,  for  I  actually  did  have 
another  purchase  in  mind.  If  you  restrict  this 
objection  to  the  possibility  that  a  sale  may  be 
lost  because  the  customer  says  no  when  he 
means  yes,  the  objection  is  n't  an  important 
one.  But  viewed  in  the  broad  sense  of  what 
is  and  what  is  n't  good  retail  salesmanship,  I 
think  we  are  going  to  find  that  this  far-fetched 
little  objection  is  closely  allied  to  the  big  un- 
answerable objection. 

This  big  objection  to  "What  else?"  and 
"Is  there  anything  else  to-day?"  in  general 
terms  is  the  same  as  the  objection  to  "What 
can  I  do  for  you  to-day?"  The  use  of  such 
questions  by  a  salesman  indicates  either  igno- 
rance of  or  indifference  to  the  possibilities  of 
salesmanship.  We  don't  need  to  be  so  much 
concerned  with  the  direct  harm  that  these 
questions  accomplish.  That  is  relatively  un- 
important. The  important  thing  is  that  such 

82 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

questions  are  useless  verbal  weeds  which 
choke  the  growth  of  salesmanship  just  as 
weeds  in  a  farmer's  field  "kill  out"  his  corn. 

The  retail  salesman  who  first  asked  a  cus- 
tomer "Is  there  anything  else  to-day?"  prob- 
ably intended  to  indicate  an  absorbing  desire 
to  be  of  further  service  to  the  customer.  Sir 
Johnston  Forbes-Robertson  could  probably 
speak  these  words  in  a  way  to  express  that 
meaning  without  any  suggestion  of  smirk- 
ing servility  in  his  manner,  but  the  aver- 
age salesman  cannot.  Many  salesmen,  no 
doubt,  realizing  this  and  being  too  self- 
respecting  to  smirk,  have  abbreviated  the 
question  to  a  short  and  imperative  "What 
else?" 

There  was  once  a  time  when  retail  salesmen 
ranked  as  servants  in  the  household  of  the 
master  tradesman.  That  time  has  passed,  but 
many  of  the  selling  methods  of  that  period 
have  survived,  although  the  servility  of  the 
tradesman's  apprentice  is  somewhat  lacking 
in  their  modern  application.  "Is  there  any- 
thing else  to-day?"  is  a  survivor  of  those 

83 


SALESMANSHIP 

times  —  a  sort  of  paraphrased  survivor  of 
"How  else  may  I  serve  you,  sir?" 

No  modern  retail  salesman  considers  him- 
self a  servant.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  is  not, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  speak  or 
try  to  adapt  to  his  present  condition  the  patter 
used  by  servants  several  centuries  ago.  While 
we  are  on  the  subject  of  servants,  we  might 
take  note  that  even  the  well-trained  servant 
has  abandoned  that  hackneyed  phrase  "Is 
there  anything  else?"  Since  not  all  of  us  have 
servants  nicely  trained  in  the  minute  subtle- 
ties of  speech  and  deportment  that  mark  the 
perfect  modern  servant,  let  us  on  this  point 
have  recourse  to  Sir  Johnston  Forbes-Robert- 
son's world,  the  stage,  which,  however  false 
and  fanciful  in  its  teachings,  is  a  preceptor 
to  some  of  us  in  matters  of  which  we  have  no 
adequate  experience  in  our  daily  lives.  The 
time  was  when  the  well-trained  stage  servant, 
after  delivering  to  his  master  the  brandy  and 
soda,  or  the  fatal  message,  or  whatever  it  was, 
would  click  his  heels  together  and  ask  in  a 
significant  way,  "Is  there  anything  else,  my 

84 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

lord?"  His  lordship,  between  gulps  of  the 
brandy  and  soda,  or  between  sentences  of  the 
message,  would  look  up  and  say  wearily,  "No, 
James,  that  is  all.  You  may  go." 

Nowadays,  if  I  am  not  misled  by  my  ob- 
servations, the  stage  servant  does  what  he  has 
to  do,  and  then,  to  use  the  language  of  panto- 
mime, "silently  registers  attention"  until  his 
lordship,  looking  up  from  the  message  or  over 
the  brandy-and-soda  glass,  discovers  him  and 
says,  "That  is  all,  James." 

*  Forgive  me  for  my  digression,  which  I  con- 
fess was  unduly  great,  as  I  merely  intended  to 
inquire  why  a  retail  salesman  should  cling  to 
a  senseless  and  servile  question  that  well- 
trained  servants  no  longer  use,  and  which, 
when  unseasoned  with  servility,  quite  often 
has  the  flavor  of  impertinence. 

•  No  good  salesman  is  either  servile  or  im- 
pertinent; nor  is  he  merely  an  unthinking 
automaton  that  mechanically  exhibits  mer- 
chandise, records  a  customer's  purchases,  and 
perfunctorily  asks,  "What  next?" 

When  I  come  into  your  store  and  buy  a 
85 


SALESMANSHIP 

toothbrush  from  you,  it  is  reasonable  to  sup- 
pose that  I  am  not  going  to  try  to  conceal  my 
intention  to  purchase  a  tube  of  tooth-paste 
if  such  intent  is  in  my  mind.  It  is  also  a  rea- 
sonable, or  at  least  a  courteous,  assumption 
that  I  am  in  just  as  much  of  a  hurry  as  you 
are,  and  that  I  will  not  unduly  withhold  a  dis- 
closure of  the  next  article  on  my  list.  If  I  have 
other  premeditated  purchases  of  your  goods 
in  mind,  I  am  pretty  certain  to  indicate  it  by 
some  word  or  act.  Suppose  my  eyes  stray  over 
to  and  rest  upon  the  contents  of  the  safety- 
razor  case.  For  the  moment,  perhaps,  I  seem 
to  have  become  unconscious  of  your  presence. 
Will  you  recall  my  mind  from  its  considera- 
tion of  safety  razors  by  briskly  asking  me, 
"What  else?"  Will  you  test  the  genuineness 
of  my  interest  in  safety  razors  by  asking  me 
whether  I  want  to  look  at  one?  Or  will  you 
quickly  and  deftly  place  a  safety  razor  in  my 
hands  and  make  an  appropriate  commenda- 
tory remark  about  it?  If  you  are  a  good  sales- 
man, I  am  sure  you  will  do  the  last-named. 
As  long  as  a  retail  customer  evinces  the 
86 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

slightest  inclination  to  buy,  it  is  the  retail 
salesman's  duty  to  help  him  buy.  Don't  ques- 
tion him;  don't  confuse  him;  just  help  him. 
If  he  does  n't  buy  as  much  of  a  given  article 
as  you  think  he  should,  it  is  your  privilege  and 
your  duty  to  endeavor  to  get  him  to  buy  a 
larger  quantity,  but  I  don't  think  it's  good 
salesmanship  to  suggest  such  a  thing  unless 
you  can  offer  a  plausible  reason  for  your  sug- 
gestion. 

An  acquaintance  of  mine,  who  is  fond  of 
playing  poker  and  fonder  still  of  telling  poker 
stories,  was  relating  one  the  other  day.  It 
seems  he  thought  he  was  playing  with  a  group 
of  solid  business  men,  a  delusion  that  most 
poker-players  appear  to  have  when  they  enter 
a  game  with  strangers.  The  business  men 
turned  out  to  be  "shillabers,"  if  you  know 
what  "shillabers"  are.  I  can't  recall  much  of 
the  story,  but  I  remember  that  the  "shilla- 
bers" tried  to  "boost"  this  gentleman  and 
that  he  flew  into  a  terrible  rage  and  "dropped 
out  of  the  pot  and  quit  the  game." 

I  am  not  a  poker-player  and  accordingly  do 
87 


SALESMANSHIP 

not  know  how  great  an  iniquity  it  is  to 
"boost"  any  one  in  a  poker  game,  but  I  do 
know  that  the  average  shopper  does  n't  like  to 
feel  that  he  is  being  "boosted"  by  a  salesman, 
and  when  boosted,  is  sometimes  inclined  to 
"  drop  out  of  the  pot  and  quit  the  game "  be- 
fore he  has  completed  all  of  his  contemplated 
purchases. 

The  salesman  of  merchandise  at  wholesale 
usually  has  certain  more  or  less  convincing 
arguments  for  the  buyer  who  proposes  to 
order  less  than  the  salesman's  estimate  of  his 
requirements.  A  retail  salesman  should  be 
equally  well  equipped  before  he  attempts  to 
influence  a  customer  to  purchase  more  than 
the  customer  intended. 

If  I  select  a  toothbrush  and  the  salesman 
says,  "How  many?"  or  "Don't  you  want 
more  than  one?"  or  "Better  let  me  wrap  you 
up  a  couple,"  I  think  I  should  call  that  boost- 
ing. But  if  he  says,  "You  probably  don't  let 
your  toothbrushes  get  very  old  before  you  dis- 
card them.  We  have  exact  duplicates  of  the 
brush  you  have  selected  in  case  you  care  to 

88 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

take  several  with  you  now,  so  that  you  will 
have  fresh  brushes  handy  whenever  you  want 
them"  —  if  the  salesman  said  that  I  don't 
think  I  should  feel  that  I  was  being  boosted. 
Or  if  the  salesman  called  attention  to  another 
style  of  brush  that  could  be  used  to  advantage 
in  conjunction  with  the  one  I  had  selected,  I 
should  n't  call  that  boosting,  either.  Or  again, 
if  the  purchase  of  half  a  dozen  toothbrushes 
at  one  time  involved  a  saving  of  ten  cents  over 
their  purchase  singly,  I  should  feel  grateful 
to  the  salesman  who  pointed  out  that  fact, 
although  my  improvidence  might  prevent  me 
from  taking  advantage  of  the  saving.  Effec- 
tive or  at  least  inoffensive  boosting  is  the  kind 
that  suggests  a  benefit  or  advantage  to  the 
customer  from  an  increased  purchase.  If  it 
does  not  contain  that  suggestion,  boosting  is 
crude  salesmanship. 

My  disorderly  mind  has  carried  us  away 
from  the  question  "Is  there  anything  else?" 
Boosting  —  if  the  license  of  brevity  permits 
that  term  —  naturally  comes  before  "What 
else?"  and  should  have  been  discussed  in  the 


SALESMANSHIP 

previous  installment  of  this  series.  No  sales- 
man, good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  will  say,  "What 
else?"  until  he  has  exhausted  all  of  the  selling 
possibilities  of  the  first  article  the  customer 
inquires  about.  Instinct  teaches  every  sales- 
man to  make  a  sale  or  get  a  final  and  positive 
"You  have  n't  got  what  I  want,"  or  "I  won't 
take  it  to-day,"  before  he  asks,  "Is  there  any- 
thing else?" 

But  why  should  any  salesman  ever  ask  any 
customer  whether  there  is  "anything  else  to- 
day"? Now  we  are  back  on  the  track  again 
and  we  are  running  into  a  head-on  collision 
with  the  question,  "What  else?"  Why  should 
a  retail  salesman  ever  ask  any  such  question? 
The  answer  is  he  should  n't.  Now  we  have 
had  our  collision  and  let  us  get  the  wreckage 
off  the  track. 

Some  one  remarks  that  a  retail  salesman's 
time  is  valuable,  and  that  there  are  lots  of 
customers  who  would  waste  it  if  the  salesman 
did  n't  hurry  them  along.  A  retail  salesman's 
time  is  valuable.  I  admit  that.  But  its  chief 
value  rests  on  his  ability  to  send  each  customer 

90 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

away  not  only  with  a  lessened  bank  roll,  but 
also  with  an  added  appreciation  of  courteous 
and  attentive  service. 

The  mere  fact  that  a  man  doesn't  hit  you  on 
the  nose  and  make  it  necessary  for  both  of  you 
to  go  down  to  the  police  station  is  no  sign  that 
you  won  an  argument  from  him  without  any 
hard  feelings  on  his  part.  Just  run  for  an  office 
at  the  club  or  have  a  bond  company  ask  him 
whether  you  use  stimulants  or  narcotics,  gam- 
ble or  live  beyond  your  means,  have  ever 
failed  in  business  or  made  a  composition  with 
creditors,  etc.,  and  you  will  learn  how  he  feels 
towards  you  —  provided  you  can  find  out  how 
he  voted  at  the  club  election  or  what  he  said 
to  the  bond  company.  It's  the  same  way 
with  your  customer.  He  does  n't  have  to  say 
"Damn  your  impertinence"  or  even  develop 
a  well-defined  consciousness  of  wherein  your 
manner  and  method  failed  to  please  him  —  he 
does  n't  have  to  do  either  of  these  things  to 
enable  him  to  go  away  with  the  impression 
that  your  store  is  run  on  the  same  principle 
as  a  subway  station;  namely,  "How  many? 


SALESMANSHIP 

Drop 'em  in!  Step  lively!!!"  In  the  long  run, 
a  store  needs  to  make  its  customers  like  it. 
It  may  have  the  best  corner  location  in  town, 
the  best  goods  and  the  lowest  prices.  It  may 
have  everything  the  real  estate  man  could 
want  to  say  about  it  in  the  "Businesses  for 
Sale"  column  and  more  than  the  advertising 
man  can  conveniently  tell  within  the  limits  of 
his  appropriation.  A  store  may  have  all  that, 
but  if  some  neighboring  store  excels  it  in 
courteous  and  intelligent  salesmanship  there 
are  mighty  likely  to  be  some  months  when 
the  treasurer  hesitates  at  taking  the  cash  dis- 
counts. 

The  man  who  has  money  to  spend  has  a 
pretty  well-developed  idea  of  his  own  dignity 
and  importance.  He  may  not  show  it,  but  he 
feels  it.  If  I  have  the  price  of  a  forty-cent  col- 
lar and  am  willing  to  spend  it  that  way,  I  am 
just  as  important  —  in  a  forty-cent-collar 
sense  —  as  any  belted  earl  who  ever  drew  a 
belt  around  a  lordly  waist,  and  I  want  to  be 
treated  that  way,  —  while  I  am  buying  the 
collar,  at  least.  The  most  acutely  sensitive 

92 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

man  in  the  world  is  the  man  who  has  money  to 
spend.  If  he  ignores  impertinence,  indiffer- 
ence, and  unintelligence  on  the  part  of  a  sales- 
man, it  is  because  of  his  feeling  of  superiority; 
and  what  salesman  wants  to  get  by  on  that 
ground  ? 

But  let  us  get  back  to  your  drug  store.  I 
have  bought  a  toothbrush  —  or  toothbrushes. 
Perhaps  I  have  also  bought  a  safety  razor. 
How  are  you  going  to  know  whether  I  want 
anything  else,  unless  you  ask  me?  An  old 
lady  is  fumbling  in  her  purse  in  a  way  to  indi- 
cate the  probable  sale  of  a  postage-stamp. 
There  is  a  man  at  the  cigar  counter  who  is 
looking  with  interest  at  the  cigars  in  the  five- 
cent  end  of  the  case.  A  boy  with  a  dirty  face 
and  excited  manner  has  come  in  with  a  paper 
that  looks  like  a  doctor's  prescription.  A  ner- 
vous and  emaciated  negro,  ostentatiously 
holding  a  paper  dollar  in  his  hand,  looks  at 
you  furtively.  He  has  the  appearance  of  a 
"coke"  but  maybe  wants  something  that 
you  can  sell  him  without  violating  the  law. 
The  man  who  tends  the  soda  bar  is  down  in 

93 


SALESMANSHIP 

the  cellar.  The  prescription  clerk  is  out  get- 
ting shaved.  You  have  the  toothbrushes  in 
one  hand  and  the  safety  razor  in  the  other. 
I  stand  opposite  you  and  don't  say  a  word. 
If  there  was  ever  a  case  that  justified  the 
question  "Is  there  anything  else?"  this  is  it. 
What  should  you  say  —  or  do?  If  I  stand 
silently  as  described,  I  think  you  should  wrap 
up  the  toothbrushes  and  the  razor.  You  know 
it  is  n't  imperative  that  all  of  my  purchases 
be  wrapped  in  one  package.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  if  each  purchase  is  wrapped  separately, 
I  am  likely  to  have  less  difficulty  in  storing 
them  away  in  my  pockets,  and  if  I  should 
finally  decide  to  have  everything  "sent,"  you 
are  out  nothing  but  the  extra  twine  and  paper 
and  the  time  spent  in  wrapping  up  the  pack- 
ages separately  and  waiting  for  me  to  make 
up  my  mind  whether  I  want  anything  else.  I 
don't  know  of  any  better  investment  in  retail 
merchandising  than  this.  When  you  have 
tied  up  the  toothbrushes  and  razor  and  pushed 
them  across  the  counter  without  getting  a 
further  rise  from  me,  you  have  the  right  to 

94 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TODAY? 

assume  that  I  have  no  intention  of  making 
other  purchases,  or  have  forgotten  what  else 
I  intended  to  buy,  or  am  maliciously  with- 
holding the  announcement  of  such  other  arti- 
cles as  I  contemplate  purchasing.  If  you 
think  the  question  "Is  there  anything  else 
to-day?"  will  recall  to  my  mind  some  con- 
templated purchase  that  I  have  forgotten,  or 
influence  me  to  buy  something  I  have  had  no 
previous  thought  of  buying,  or  force  the  dis- 
closure of  something  I  wish  to  conceal  from 
you,  then  by  all  means  ask  the  question. 

But,  is  such  a  question  likely  to  refresh  my 
memory  —  let  alone  stimulate  my  spending 
propensities?  Lawyers,  who  are  presumably 
the  most  expert  questioners  to  be  found,  dearly 
love  to  propound  leading  questions  when  they 
are  trying  to  extract  the  facts  from  their  own 
witnesses  and  are  not  endeavoring  to  confuse 
and  confound  an  opposing  witness.  As  I  have 
said  before,  "Is  there  anything  else  to-day?" 
is  not  a  leading  question,  and  it  suggests  noth- 
ing to  me.  If  I  have  forgotten  any  articles 
that  I  had  intended  to  purchase,  this  question 
95 


SALESMANSHIP 

will  not  refresh  my  recollection.  I  am  sure  of 
that.  On  the  contrary,  such  a  question  is 
more  likely  to  have  exactly  the  opposite  ef- 
fect. You  will  have  to  frame  a  different  sort 
of  question  to  recall  my  vagrant  recollection. 
But  need  you  ask  me  any  questions  at  this 
point?  A  random  question  is  a  rather  foolish 
thing  in  salesmanship.  Questions  that  do  not 
have  a  well-conceived  purpose  and  fairly  well- 
anticipated  consequence  would  better  be  left 
unasked  by  salesmen. 

If  I  stand  silently  at  your  counter  after  you 
have  wrapped  up  my  toothbrushes  and  razor, 
it  is  fairly  safe  for  you  to  assume  that  I  have 
bought  all  I  intended  to  buy  when  I  entered 
the  store.  It  is  safe  for  you  to  assume  that  you 
have  received  all  of  the  voluntary  offerings 
that  I  propose  to  give  you,  and  it  is  up  to  you 
to  commence  to  sell  goods  to  me  if  you  want 
any  more  of  my  money. 

My  purchase  of  a  toothbrush  suggests 
tooth-paste  or  powder.  Possibly  you  have  a 
new  brand  that  you  are  pushing.  If  you  have, 
it  will  do  no  harm  to  tell  me  about  it.  If  I 

96 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

assert  my  fidelity  to  some  other  brand,  there 
is  no  harm  in  commending  that  brand,  too. 
I  might  decide  to  ask  you  to  wrap  up  a  pack- 
age of  it  to  go  with  my  new  toothbrushes. 

Razors  suggest  shaving-soap  and  brushes. 
You  might  ask  me  whether  I  have  plenty  of 
shaving-soap  at  home.  I  think  that  would  be 
a  fair  question.  As  to  brushes,  I  think  it  would 
be  better  to  show  me  one  without  first  asking 
me  whether  I  am  interested  in  brushes.  You 
might  say  something  like  this,  "If  you  need 
a  new  shaving-brush,  here  is  one  that  I  can 
recommend,  because,"  etc. 

If  there  is  anything  else  that  your  store  or 
your  department  is  trying  to  push  and  which 
you  believe  I  might  be  interested  in,  I  think 
you  would  be  justified  in  showing  it  to  me  or 
telling  me  about  it,  even  though  the  old  lady, 
the  nickel-cigar  smoker,  the  little  boy,  and 
the  negro  are  still  waiting  and  your  associates 
have  not  yet  returned  from  the  cellar  and  the 
barber  shop.  Of  course,  you  should  be  guided 
somewhat  by  your  estimate  of  your  store: 
that  is  to  say,  whether  you  regard  it  as  an 

97 


SALESMANSHIP 

emergency  supply  station  or  as  a  merchan- 
dising establishment.  Ordinarily  a  bird  in  the 
hand  is  worth  two  in  the  bush,  and  if  you 
signify  to  each  waiting  customer  by  a  prop- 
erly emphasized  salutation  that  you  are  con- 
scious of  his  (or  her)  presence,  gratified  at  it, 
and  intend  to  reward  it  with  your  undivided 
attention  in  a  minute  or  so,  no  one  is  likely  to 
become  impatient  on  the  sole  ground  that  you 
are  showing  proper  and  salesmanlike  atten- 
tion to  the  customer  you  have  in  hand.  I  am 
not  so  sure  about  the  old  lady  who  wants  the 
postage-stamp,  but  she  is  probably  a  pretty 
reasonable  old  lady,  and  after  you  have  sold 
her  the  stamp  with  proper  courtesy  and  con- 
sideration she  is  likely  to  go  away  in  tolerable 
content. 

We  have  been  talking  mostly  about  drug 
stores.  I  have  purposely  kept  close  to  the 
corner  drug  store,  for  the  conditions  that  exist 
in  a  busy  drug  store  are  about  as  unfavorable 
to  the  application  of  my  theories  of  retail 
salesmanship  as  any  conditions  that  could  be 
imagined.  I  believe,  however,  that  retail  drug 


ANYTHING  ELSE  TO-DAY? 

salesmen  could  with  profit  to  themselves  and 
their  employers  do  more  of  selling  and  less  of 
perfunctory  order-taking.  If  this  is  true  of 
drug  clerks,  it  is  more  true  of  most  other  kinds 
of  retail  salesmen. 


IV 

JUST  LOOKING 

MILLIONS  of  dollars  are  spent  in  advertis- 
ing, just  to  get  people  to  come  and  take  a 
look.  Every  department-store  advertisement 
is  practically  an  invitation  to  come  and  look. 
The  boss  spends  his  money  that  way.  Silly 
old  duck,  isn't  he?  As  long  as  he  has  been  in 
the  retail  business,  he  ought  to  know  that  the 
people  behind  the  counter  have  no  time  for 
"lookers." 

Of  course  there  are  several  different  kinds 
of  lookers.  The  kind  that  Ziegfeld  has  in  his 
" Follies  of  Nineteen  and  Yesterday"  make 
more  or  less  of  a  hit  with  salesmen  —  so  do  the 
Fifth  Avenue  kind.  But  isn't  it  an  outrage 
that  a  self-respecting,  time-valuing  salesman 
or  saleslady  should  have  to  be  annoyed  by  a 
very  ordinary  woman  who  has  been  saving  up 
for  a  piece  of  fur  or  a  fall  suit  since  July  and 
comes  around  in  September  to  look  the  lines 
100 


JUST  LOOKING 

over,  although  she  knows  good  and  well  that 
she  won't  be  ready  to  buy  before  the  second 
pay-day  in  October?  That's  the  kind  of 
looker  the  retail  sales-people  don't  like.  Am 
I  right? 

Dear  salesladies  and  salesmen,  your  mothers 
probably  saved  and  scraped  and  planned  for 
more  than  one  fall  suit.  Perhaps  more  than 
once  a  new  frock  for  you,  dear  saleslady,  or  a 
new  overcoat  for  you,  dear  salesman,  made 
extra  hard  the  saving,  scraping,  and  planning 
for  mother's  fall  suit.  In  your  particular  case, 
of  course,  I  may  be  wrong  about  all  of  this. 
You  may  have  come  from  a  home  of  wealth 
or  you  may  have  been  self-supporting  from 
the  day  of  your  birth.  In  either  case  I  apol- 
ogize, but  the  fact  remains  that  nine  tenths  of 
the  merchandise  sold  over  the  counters  of  this 
country  is  bought  by  people  who  have  to  plan 
and  save  before  they  buy  it.  In  other  words, 
nine  tenths  of  the  buying  public  are  lookers. 
They  look  before  they  buy.  Nevertheless, 
sales-people  detest  lookers  —  detest  nine 
tenths  of  their  bread  and  butter,  nine  tenths 
101 


SALESMANSHIP 

of  the  boss's  profit  statement,  and  nine  tenths 
of  the  boss's  bank  balance. 

The  comic  papers  divide  with  shop  girl  sob- 
stories  the  responsibility  for  a  large  share  of 
the  antipathy  and  intolerance  toward  lookers. 
It's  remarkable  how  we  are  influenced  by 
jokes  and  fiction.  Take  mothers-in-law,  for 
example.  A  man  may  have  a  perfectly  lovely 
mother-in-law  and  all  the  mothers-in-law  he 
knows  may  be  pretty  nice  old  ladies,  but  he 
ignores  his  own  experience  and  permits  the 
jokesmiths  to  prejudice  him  against  all  the 
mothers-in-law  whom  he  does  n't  happen  to 
know  personally.  It's  the  same  way  about 
lookers.  The  joke-makers  have  taken  their 
fling  at  lookers,  and  the  short-story  writers 
have  brought  our  indignation  to  fever  heat 
by  the  story  of  how  Katie  Cooney  stood  be- 
hind the  counter  from  8  until  5.30  and  va- 
liantly stood  off  the  lookers.  At  11.59  a  Par- 
ticularly  crafty  and  plausible  looker  nearly 
tricked  Katie  into  courteous  service,  but,  re- 
freshed at  12.30  by  a  cup  of  tea  and  a  slice  of 
toast,  Katie  came  back  and  snubbed  the 
102 


JUST  LOOKING 

lookers  to  a  standstill  right  up  to  5.29.  No, 
sir,  never  let  them  win  a  bet.  Then  she  went 
home  on  the  Third  Avenue  Elevated. 

Rupert  Hughes  —  dog-gone  him !  —  can 
make  me  mad  enough  to  bite  a  looker.  But  if 
it  was  n't  for  the  way  that  he  and  a  lot  of 
other  writers  play  on  my  sentiments  and  pull 
at  my  heartstrings  when  they  tell  me  about 
Katie  Cooney,  I  would  very  possibly  wonder 
whether  Katie,  if  she  had  taken  a  little  more 
pains  with  lookers,  might  not  have  become 
the  head  of  her  department  and  been  able  to 
ride  home  in  a  taxicab  on  extremely  bad 
nights,  instead  of  doing  a  battle  for  life  on  the 
Third  Avenue  Elevated. 

The  lookers  constitute  a  percentage  which 
Katie  Cooney  can't  beat.  Over  at  Monte 
Carlo  there  is  only  one  "O"  on  each  roulette 
wheel,  but  the  "O"  comes  up  often  enough  to 
upset  most  systems  of  play.  Think  of  the  odds 
that  Katie  Cooney  gives!  The  lookers  are 
nine  in  ten,  but  Katie  has  no  use  for  lookers. 
She  puts  all  of  her  bets  on  the  ready-to-buy 
people. 

103 


SALESMANSHIP 

Now  some  one  rises  up  and  inquires:  "Do 
you  mean  to  say  that  only  one  shopper  in  ten 
is  ready  to  buy?  Why,  in  my  department,  I 
make  sales  to  fully  two  thirds  of  the  people 
who  ask  me  to  show  them  goods." 

A  question  like  this  gets  right  at  the  root  of 
the  matter.  It  shows  that  we  don't  stop  to 
think  what  lookers  are.  Nearly  everybody  is 
a  looker.  I  am  one;  so  are  you;  and  so  is  Katie 
Cooney,  when  she  finds  the  time  for  it.  In 
spite  of  all  that  sales-people  can  do  to  stamp 
out  the  practice,  looking  is  on  the  increase. 

Now  about  your  two  thirds  who  buy  when 
they  look;  do  they  buy  every  kind  of  article 
they  ask  to  see?  No!  Then  those  who  don't 
are  lookers,  for  people  who  don't  buy  every- 
thing they  look  at  are  lookers.  However,  we 
don't  need  to  count  the  lookers  in  that  way. 
Let  us  assume  that  there  are  one  hundred  de- 
partments in  your  store;  that  ten  thousand 
shoppers  visit  the  store  within  a  given  space 
of  time;  that  on  the  average  each  of  the  one 
hundred  departments  is  visited  during  the 
aforesaid  space  of  time  by  three  hundred  peo- 
104 


JUST  LOOKING 

pie  who  ask  to  have  goods  shown;  and  that  in 
each  of  the  one  hundred  departments  two 
thirds  of  the  people  to  whom  goods  are  shown 
make  purchases. 

Thus  we  have  ten  thousand  people  who 
take  thirty  thousand  looks  and  make  twenty 
thousand  purchases.  The  looks  exceed  the 
purchases  by  ten  thousand,  and  if  we  divide 
these  ten  thousand  non-order-producing  looks 
equally  among  the  ten  thousand  people  who 
entered  the  store,  we  make  a  looker  out  of 
every  blamed  one  of  the  entire  ten  thousand. 
Of  course,  that  can't  be  exactly  right,  because 
in  the  ten  thousand  there  was  probably  some 
man  who  rushed  in  and  matched  up  a  piece 
of  dress  goods  for  his  wife,  ordered  it  "charged 
and  sent,"  and  then  rushed  away  again  with- 
out looking  at  anything  else,  except  that  flashy 
blonde  in  the  glove  department. 

No,  these  figures  are  admittedly  hypothet- 
ical, approximate,  and  inexact  figures,  but 
they  serve  to  answer  the  question  asked. 

Most  of  the  daily  sales  in  department  stores, 
and  in  a  good  many  other  kinds  of  stores  for 
105 


SALESMANSHIP 

that  matter,  are  the  culmination  of  previous 
looking,  and  an  immense  majority  of  those 
who  make  purchases  to-day  take  occasion  to 
look  at  other  and  totally  different  kinds  of 
articles  that  they  are  not  prepared  to  buy  to- 
day, but  intend  to  purchase  somewhere  at 
some  time. 

There  is  an  endless  chain  of  looking  and 
purchasing.  The  looker  of  to-day  is  the  buyer 
of  to-morrow. 

Nine  tenths  of  the  people  in  this  country 
are  lookers  because  their  flat  purses  promote 
the  prudent  practice  of  looking  and  compar- 
ing before  buying.  As  to  the  other  tenth,  if 
there  are  that  many  who  need  not  concern 
themselves  about  the  price  of  anything,  I 
really  think  that  most  of  them  are  lookers,  too, 
for  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  quite  a 
lot  of  fun  in  looking. 

The  salesman  who  merely  holds  himself  in 
readiness  to  sell  to  those  who  are  ready  to  buy 
is  obviously  neglecting  an  important  and  prof- 
itable branch  of  retail  salesmanship;  yet  there 
are  thousands  of  retail  sales-people  who  com- 
106 


JUST  LOOKING 

prehend  no  other  function  of  salesmanship 
and  recognize  the  existence  of  no  demand  that 
does  not  manifest  itself  in  the  form  of  a  prompt 
purchase. 

Their  conception  of  the  law  of  supply  and 
demand,  as  applied  to  retail  merchandise,  is 
that  a  daily  recurring  demand  for  their  em- 
ployer's goods  will  bring  to  their  departments 
each  day  a  tolerably  constant  number  of  pur- 
chasers, much  as  the  tide  deposits  seaweed  on 
the  beach.  They  do  not  concern  themselves 
with  the  origin  of  this  demand,  nor  do  they 
consider  what  means  they  can  employ  to 
stimulate  it  or  confine  it  to  the  merchandise  of 
their  respective  shops. 

They  reflect  no  more  on  such  matters  than 
the  farmer  who  rakes  up  and  carts  away  the 
seaweed  reflects  on  the  cause  of  the  tides  or 
meditates  on  means  to  induce  the  waves  to 
cast  more  seaweed  upon  his  particular  strip 
of  shore. 

Stomachs  to  be  fed,  backs  to  be  clothed, 
vanity  to  be  appeased,  beauty  to  be  adorned, 
and  various  other  human  requirements  com- 
107 


SALESMANSHIP 

bine  to  create  and  maintain  that  natural  de- 
mand for  merchandise  which  is  the  foundation 
of  trade;  but  no  ambitious  retail  merchant  is 
satisfied  with  the  natural  demand  alone. 

He  not  only  strives  to  get  what  he  calls  his 
share  of  that  patronage  but  also  seeks  to 
create  new  tastes,  excite  new  demands,  and 
promote  new  requirements  on  the  part  of  the 
buying  public.  He  says  he  wants  his  share  of 
the  business  in  sight.  In  reality  he  wants  more 
than  his  share,  for  getting  more  than  one's 
share  is  what  distinguishes  success  in  retail 
merchandising  as  in  most  other  lines  of  human 
endeavor. 

His  window  displays  are  intended  to  make 
"window  wishers"  of  the  passing  throng,  and 
his  advertising  is  meant  to  bring  the  public  to 
his  store  as  lookers,  if  not  as  buyers.  He  pro- 
motes "charge  accounts"  with  responsible 
people,  is  graciously  willing  to  send  some  kinds 
of  goods  "on  approval,"  and  adopts  the  gener- 
ous policy  of  "your  money  back  if  not  satis- 
fied." He  baits  his  hook  with  every  lure  that 
his  ingenuity  can  devise  and  then  he  drops  the 
108 


JUST  LOOKING 

hook  overboard  and  goes  away  —  far  away  — 
way  up  into  his  private  office.  There  comes  a 
nibble  at  the  hook.  A  lackadaisical  sales-per- 
son pulls  up  the  fish,  finds  it  is  nothing  but  a 
looker,  and  scornfully  throws  it  back  into  the 
water  to  swim  around  until  it  grows  into  a 
buyer.  If  this  fish  is  permitted  to  develop  into 
a  buyer  while  disporting  itself  in  the  open 
waters  of  competition,  no  one  knows  what 
merchant's  hook  will  finally  catch  it.  But  if 
the  sales-person  who  drew  the  fish  out  of  the 
water  when  it  was  merely  a  looker  had  taken 
the  trouble  courteously  to  maneuver  it  into  the 
backwaters  of  competition  by  placing  it  in  the 
firm's  private  preserve  for  prospects  properly 
handled,  there  would  not  be  so  much  doubt, 
and  perhaps  very  little  doubt  at  all,  as  to 
whose  hook  would  finally  transfix  its  gills. 

The  boss  wants  lookers,  because  he  knows 
the  looker  of  to-day  is  the  buyer  of  to-morrow, 
and  he  wants  to  make  the  lookers  feel  that  his 
store  is  "the  best  place  to  trade,"  which  is 
only  another  way  of  saying  that  it  is  the  best 
place  to  do  one's  looking.  He  also  knows  that 
109 


SALESMANSHIP 

the  looker  of  to-day  can  sometimes  be  con- 
verted into  a  buyer  before  the  day  is  over. 
All  he  requires  to  accomplish  what  he  desires 
is  salesmanship  among  his  sales-people.  Does 
he  get  it?  Not  from  all  of  them.  If  he  did 
there  would  be  less  need  for  commissions  to 
inquire  laboriously  into  the  relation  between 
shopgirls'  wages  and  shopgirls'  chastity,  for 
real  salesmanship  will  get  the  money  where- 
ever  it  is  practiced  and  by  whomever  it  is 
practiced.  Real  salesmanship  is  one  light  that 
can't  be  hidden  under  a  bushel.  It's  a  light 
that  can't  be  obscured.  It's  a  light  that  will 
shine  above  department  heads  and  floorwalk- 
ers and  reach  clear  up  to  "the  old  man"  in  his 
private  office,  if  you  keep  it  burning  long 
enough. 

What  is  salesmanship  ?  No  one  quite  knows. 
But  if  you  will  take  care  of  the  lookers,  if  you 
will  make  all  the  lookers  pleasantly  remember 
what  you  showed  them  and  how  you  showed 
it  to  them  when  they  were  merely  looking, 
you  will  have  mastered  one  very  important 
branch  of  retail  salesmanship. 
no 


JUST  LOOKING 

The  other  night  on  a  suburban  train  I  sat 
behind  two  women  who  either  misjudged  the 
acoustic  properties  of  the  car  or  were  indiffer- 
ent to  the  fact  that  they  might  be  overhead. 
At  least  I  heard  their  conversation  plainly, 
without  conscious  intent  to  become  an  eaves- 
dropper. They  mentioned  the  name  of  a  cer- 
tain New  York  department  store.  It  is  a  really 
wonderful  store.  Yet  these  two  women  in 
front  of  me  were  registering  an  indignant  and 
heartfelt  vow  that  so  long  as  they  might  live 
they  would  never  visit  the  fur  department  of 
this  store  again.  They  had  been  in  search  of 
some  kind  of  fur  garment.  By  this  time  my 
ears  were  alert  enough,  but  my  sluggish  brain 
and  unfamiliarity  with  the  nomenclature  of 
the  retail  fur  trade  caused  me  to  miss  the  exact 
character  of  the  fur  garment.  However,  I 
heard  them  reconstruct  in  indignant  terms 
the  inattentiveness  (they  called  it  insolence) 
of  the  sales-person  who  "waited"  on  them. 
Evidently  they  were  lookers,  but  if  I  am  any 
judge,  at  least  one  of  them  was  shortly  to  be- 
come a  buyer.  The  saleswoman,  with  the  intu- 
iii 


SALESMANSHIP 

ition  of  her  craft,  evidently  divined  that  they 
had  not  yet  progressed  to  the  buying  stage. 
Handling  furs  on  a  warm  day  in  October  is 
rather  disheartening  work,  and  I  suppose  this 
saleswoman  said  to  herself:  "  These  dames 
aren't  ready  to  buy.  What's  the  use  of  show- 
ing them  goods?  Let  'em  come  back  when 
they're  ready."  She  may  have  been  quite 
justified.  Who  am  I  to  say  that  she  wasn't? 
But  I  'm  pretty  sure  that  her  house  and  she 
lost  a  good  chance  to  file  a  lien  on  a  future  fur 
sale. 

Speaking  of  this  store,  I  myself  had  an  ex- 
perience of  the  same  sort  in  the  very  same 
store  just  about  a  year  ago.  The  advertising 
man  was  responsible  for  it.  I  was  thinking  of 
getting  an  everyday  overcoat  —  the  kind  of 
overcoat  that  gives  you  no  special  concern 
when  you  get  it  wet  or  fall  down  on  the  pave- 
ment in  stepping  off  a  street  car.  The  adver- 
tising man  took  an  eighth  of  a  newspaper  page 
to  tell  about  a  certain  consignment  of  London 
ready-made  overcoats.  The  advertisement 
had  the  flavor  of  Conduit  Street  —  of  Conduit 

112 


JUST  LOOKING 

Street  at  the  very  least.  It  made  one  think  of 
honest  British  yeomen  shearing  honest  Brit- 
ish sheep;  of  incomparable  British  weaving 
and  —  perhaps — of  incredibly  stupid  British 
tailoring,  if  one  were  not  wholly  robbed  of 
one's  discretion  by  the  infinite  charm  of  the 
advertisement. 

I,  as  a  looker,  but  a  looker  with  the  purchas- 
ing point  of  view  not  over  a  fortnight  away, 
accepted  the  invitation  of  the  advertisement 
and  entered  this  store  to  examine  these  won- 
derful English  overcoats  and  weigh  their 
qualities  of  fabric,  cut,  and  finish  against  the 
tailored  products  of  the  amiable  but  rather 
high-charging  Fifth  Avenue  gentleman  who 
makes  most  of  my  outer  garments.  The  first 
coat  I  tried  on  developed  an  unseemly  open 
seam  on  the  shoulder;  the  next  crouched  on 
my  back  in  a  most  singular  fashion.  There 
was  something  wrong  with  this  and  some- 
thing else  wrong  with  that,  but  finally  there 
was  one  that  seemed  almost,  if  not  quite,  all 
right.  I  was  tempted  to  say,  "I'll  take  it," 
but  after  all,  why  should  I  say  that  when  I 
113 


SALESMANSHIP 

really  did  n't  need  the  coat  for  a  couple  of 
weeks  and  meanwhile  might  see  something 
better  at  the  same  price  or  something  equal 
at  a  lower  price?  I  do  not  know  what  lack  of 
sincerity  or  seriousness  I  exhibited  to  the 
salesman,  but  I  do  know  that  he  finally  said : 
"That's  a  beautiful  overcoat  and  fits  you  per- 
fectly. //  you  really  want  an  overcoat,  you 
could  n't  get  anything  better.  Of  course,  if 
you  don't  want  an  overcoat,  I  can't  sell  you 
one."  Viewed  as  a  question  of  salesmanship  I 
thought  this  rather  an  interesting  situation 
and  asked  him  to  send  for  the  head  of  the 
department.  "What  for?"  the  salesman  in- 
quired. "  In  order  that  he  may  decide  whether 
I  really  want  an  overcoat."  There  ensued 
apologies  and  explanations  on  the  salesman's 
part  and  assurances  of  appreciation  and  es- 
teem for  each  other  on  the  part  of  both  of  us. 
It  was  all  very  charming,  but  I  left  without 
buying  an  overcoat,  and  I  think  it  would  take 
something  like  a  requisition  on  this  store  from 
a  charitable  association  to  induce  me  to  go 
there  again  in  quest  of  an  overcoat. 
114 


JUST  LOOKING 

There  is  but  one  department  of  this  par- 
ticular store  that  I  now  patronize.  In  this 
department  they  have  a  certain  article  at  a 
particularly  attractive  price.  When  I  need 
that  article  I  go  there  and  buy  it.  On  such 
occasions  I  represent  natural  demand  and  an 
open  purse.  I  measure  up  to  the  retail  sales- 
man's estimate  of  what  a  shopper  should  be, 
and  I  am  treated  accordingly.  I  shun  all  of  the 
other  departments.  In  the  past  I  have  visited 
several  of  them  and  usually  encountered  either 
indifference  to  or  hostility  for  lookers.  Per- 
haps no  one  else  has  had  similar  experiences 
in  this  store.  I  do  not  know  about  that,  but 
I  do  know  that  it  is  never  on  the  list  of  ac- 
counts presented  by  the  official  buyer  of  my 
household  at  the  month  end.  Questioned  once 
as  to  the  reason  for  this,  she  replied,  "There's 
no  occasion  to  have  an  account  with  them  be- 
cause I  never  buy  anything  there  except  a  few 
things  that  they  handle  exclusively,  and  I 
might  as  well  pay  cash  because  I  never  go 
there  without  knowing  in  advance  just  what 
I  want."  Her  method  of  shopping  in  this 


SALESMANSHIP 

store  must  be  a  delight  to  the  sales-people, 
although  probably  not  quite  so  satisfying  to 
the  proprietors. 

The  unwillingness  of  retail  salesmen  and 
saleswomen  to  devote  much  time  to  lookers 
rests  on  several  reasons,  but  not  all  sales- 
people have  the  same  reasons  nor  is  there  a 
universal  method  of  manifesting  their  intoler- 
ance of  lookers.  Let  us  consider  the  case  of 
the  gentleman  who  tried  to  sell  me  an  over- 
coat. Except  for  the  fact  that  he  was  a  bad 
loser  and  lacked  a  convincing  line  of  argument 
in  behalf  of  his  goods,  this  man  was  a  good 
salesman.  Perhaps  you  smile  and  say,  "Ex- 
cept for  that,  he  was  all  right,  was  he?"  You 
misunderstand  me,  for  I  really  mean  that  this 
salesman  had  a  lot  of  salesmanlike  qualities. 
Most  salesmen  can  tell  a  looker  at  a  glance, 
and  he  probably  knew  that  I  was  one  as  soon 
as  he  gave  me  the  "once  over."  He  knew  the 
dice  were  loaded,  but  he  was  willing  to  play. 
He  knew  I  was  merely  a  looker,  but  he  was 
willing  to  pull  out  as  many  overcoats  from  his 
stock  as  I  would  try  on.  He  had  no  complaint 
116 


JUST  LOOKING 

to  make  against  the  loaded  dice  until  after  the 
last  throw.  Then,  to  use  the  language  of  the 
gambling  fraternity,  he  "squealed"  or  "made 
a  holler."  He  was  a  man  who  believed  in  his 
ability  as  a  salesman  and  he  was  willing  to  bet 
his  time  and  labor  that  his  selling  skill  could 
convert  me  from  a  looker  into  a  buyer,  but 
when  he  lost  his  bet  he  "squealed."  Now  his 
skill  was  not  as  great  as  he  imagined  and 
he  was  not  in  proper  synchronism  with  the 
advertising  department  of  his  store.  To  him 
these  London  overcoats  were  just  overcoats 
—  nothing  else.  To  the  advertising  man  and 
to  those  who  had  been  influenced  by  his  ad- 
vertisement they  were  something  more  than 
that.  The  advertising  man  in  an  eighth  of  a 
page  of  newspaper  space  had  enveloped  them 
with  an  alluring  British  atmosphere,  but  the 
salesman  was  too  thoroughly  patriotic  to  say 
anything  about  an  English-made  coat  that  he 
would  n't  say  about  a  Rochester-made  gar- 
ment. When  I  called  attention  to  a  gaping 
shoulder  seam,  he  remarked,  "I  can't  under- 
stand it,"  in  a  tone  which  faintly  implied  the 
117 


SALESMANSHIP 

suspicion  that  I  had  possibly  ripped  the  seam 
open  with  a  knife  when  he  was  n't  looking.  He 
threw  the  ripped  coat  on  a  chair  and  said, 
"Try  this  one."  When  his  attention  was 
called  to  the  eccentric  needlework  in  the  lin- 
ing and  buttonholes  of  the  next  garment,  "It's 
an  elegant  coat,  though,"  was  his  only  re- 
sponse. 

What  might  he  have  said?  Suppose  he  had 
said :  "Of  course  you  understand  about  British 
tailoring.  I  dare  say  you  have  had  clothes 
made  over  in  London  and  know  that  English 
workmanship  even  in  the  most  exclusive  tai- 
loring establishments  is  not  quite  up  to  Amer- 
ican workmanship.  That  ripped  seam  is  an 
illustration.  It  might  happen  to  a  garment 
from  any  tailor  shop  in  London.  We  insist  on 
the  best  workmanship  that  London  can  pro- 
duce and  we  get  it,  but,  notwithstanding  that, 
we  sometimes  are  obliged  to  have  our  own 
tailors  go  over  an  imported  English  garment, 
as  we  shall  have  them  do  with  that  coat  there. 
This  is  the  idea,  you  know;  we  stand  back  of 
the  workmanship,  and  London  stands  back 
118 


JUST  LOOKING 

of  the  material  and  the  smartness  of  the  fash- 
ion. There  are  two  great  sources  of  satisfaction 
in  wearing  one  of  these  coats.  First,  you  know 
that  the  cloth  is  the  finest  that  any  loom  can 
weave.  Second,  you  know  that  the  style  has 
just  come  oversea  from  London  where  the 
really  correct  fashions  in  men's  garments 
originate." 

Suppose  he  had  said  something  like  that, 
would  n't  it  have  been  better  than  what  he 
did  say?  Even  if  I  had  gone  away  without  buy- 
ing, would  n't  I  have  gone  away  with  a  greater 
hankering  for  an  English  coat  and  would  n't 
I  have  said  to  myself,  "If  you  buy  an  English 
overcoat,  there's  the  place  to  buy  it  and  that 
young  fellow  is  the  chap  to  buy  it  from"? 
Would  n't  I?  What  do  you  think? 

And  when  I  started  to  leave  without  taking 
the  coat,  suppose  the  salesman  had  said,  "I'll 
be  looking  for  you  back  again  before  the  first 
big  football  game.  I  know  you'll  want  one  of 
these  coats  then."  If  he  had  said  something 
like  that  and  handed  me  his  card,  would  n't 
he  have  been  a  good  bit  surer  of  getting  my 
119 


SALESMANSHIP 

overcoat  money  on  to  his  sales-book?   What 
do  you  think  about  it? 

You  may  say:  "Well,  a  salesman  must 
make  a  closing  talk,  must  n't  he?  A  salesman 
who  isn't  a  closer  isn't  a  salesman.  He  simply 
tried  to  make  you  fall  for  the  rush  act  and 
failed.  It  might  have  gone  over  with  the  next 
customer.  You  can't  tell."  Yes,  that's  right. 
He  did  simply  try  to  make  me  "fall  for  the 
rush  act"  —  very  simply.  I  don't  know  of 
anything  that's  simpler  in  a  "simp"  sense  in 
salesmanship  than  for  a  salesman  to  be  im- 
patient, or  a  bad  loser,  and  give  a  customer 
the  rush  act  at  the  wrong  time.  A  jockey  who 
resorts  to  the  whip  and  steels  before  he  has 
reached  the  final  half-furlong  of  the  race  is 
usually  condemned  by  experts  on  racing  tech- 
nique. To  have  the  mount  on  a  "  slow  begin- 
ner" or  occasion  "to  hook  with  a  front-runner 
and  make  her  quit"  are  about  the  only  ex- 
cuses recognized  in  racing  for  the  early  ap- 
plication of  whip  and  spur.  They  are  also 
practically  the  only  excuses  for  using  the  rush 
act  in  salesmanship  before  your  customer  is 

120 


JUST  LOOKING 

palpably  on  the  brink  of  buying.  In  shoppers 
the  equivalent  of  a  slow  beginner  is  the  cus- 
tomer who  gives  you  no  indication  of  his  pref- 
erence in  respect  to  the  goods  you  show  him. 
The  proper  "rush  act"  for  this  kind  of  cus- 
tomer is  to  center  your  selling  effort  on  one  of 
the  various  styles  you  have  exhibited  and  say 
to  him  in  effect,  "There's  the  thing  you  want 
—  right  there,"  and  then  tell  him  why.  You 
can  start  a  slow  beginner  by  giving  him  the 
same  "work"  as  you  would  use  in  closing  an 
ordinary  customer. 

A  "front-runner"  shopper  is  one  who  is  so 
voluble  and  self-centered  that  you  can't  get 
a  chance  to  impress  upon  her  mind  the  good 
qualities  of  the  merchandise  you  are  showing 
her.  I  say  "her"  advisedly,  for  a  majority  of 
the  front-runner  shoppers  are  females,  just  as 
a  majority  of  the  front-runners  at  the  race- 
track are  mares  and  fillies.  There  are  two 
ways  to  beat  a  front-runner  at  the  race-track; 
either  "wait  for  her  to  come  back,"  which 
means  wait  until  she  gets  tired,  or  "hook  with 
her  and  make  her  quit,"  which  means  outrun 

121 


SALESMANSHIP 

her  with  your  own  mount  in  order  to  discour- 
age her  from  further  running  on  her  own  ac- 
count. In  salesmanship  the  better  method  is 
to  "wait  for  her  to  come  back";  but  a  very 
good  rush  act  for  a  front-runner  customer,  if 
you  feel  that  you  must  use  the  "rush  work," 
is  to  say  in  a  slightly  louder  tone  and  with 
slightly  more  rapidity  of  speech  than  she  her- 
self has  been  using:  "Listen,  please!  Here  is 
something  I  think  you  want.  Just  forget 
everything  else  for  an  instant.  Examine  this 
carefully  and  tell  me  if  I  am  not  right."  The 
proper  rush  work  in  salesmanship  is  pretty 
much  the  same  no  matter  when  it  is  applied, 
just  as  the  whip  and  steel  always  feel  pretty 
much  the  same  to  a  race-horse.  But,  neverthe- 
less, it  makes  a  lot  of  difference  when  you  use 
the  rush  work  —  just  as  it  makes  a  lot  of  dif- 
ference when  a  jockey  uses  his  whip  and  spurs. 
Many  a  sale  has  been  lost  by  giving  a  customer 
the  rush  act  at  the  wrong  time,  just  as  many 
a  race  has  been  lost  by  going  to  the  whip 
at  the  wrong  time.  My  overcoat  salesman 
apparently  understood  something  about  the 
122 


JUST  LOOKING 

rush  act,  for  he  confined  his  remarks  to  the 
one  particular  coat  that  suited  me  best.  But, 
because  he  was  a  bad  loser,  he  gave  me  the 
rush  work  at  the  wrong  time,  and  I  went  away 
and  never  intend  to  go  back. 

We  have  taken  a  long  time  to  talk  about 
this  English  overcoat  and  the  very  English 
method  by  which  an  American  salesman  tried 
to  sell  it  to  me,  but  I  think  the  incident  is 
worth  the  space  because  this  particular  sales- 
man was  willing  to  spend  more  time  and 
thought  on  a  looker  than  many  sales-people 
are. 

A  reason  why  some  sales-people  haven't 
any  time  for  lookers  is  because  they  think  they 
have  other  more  important  work  than  trying 
to  hold  the  store's  patronage.  This  applies  to 
small  stores  to  a  greater  extent  than  to  de- 
partment stores.  In  the  town  where  I  live 
there  is  a  drug  store  which  announces  to  the 
public  that  it  makes  a  specialty  of  catering 
to  commuters'  morning-cigar  trade.  I  don't 
know  how  they  handle  that  trade  now  be- 
cause I  have  transferred  my  morning  patron- 
123 


SALESMANSHIP 

age.  But  before  I  realized  that  getting  to  the 
office  at  a  seasonable  hour  was  more  important 
to  me  than  my  patronage  appeared  to  be  to 
the  drug  store,  I  made  a  serious  and,  I  think, 
fairly  intelligent  effort  to  become  a  regular 
morning  customer  of  this  drug  store.  Some- 
how, it  nearly  always  happened  that  the  place 
was  empty  of  customers  when  I  entered  it. 
The  clerks  were  invariably  out  of  sight.  Sig- 
nificant sounds  from  the  stock-room  and  the 
prescription  laboratory  indicated  their  where- 
abouts and  the  fact  that  they  were  performing 
various  manual  duties  preparatory  to  the  day's 
business.  The  noise  of  my  entrance  and  the 
purposeful  shuffling  of  my  feet  on  the  floor 
rarely  brought  them  forth.  A  half-dollar 
pounded  vigorously  on  the  top  of  a  show-case 
would  produce  results,  but  not  immediate 
ones.  First  there  would  be  an  interval  of  si- 
lence, while  each  of  the  two  clerks  listened  to 
hear  whether  the  other  was  coming  out  of  his 
lair  to  attend  to  my  wants.  Neither  hearing 
the  other,  both  would  emerge  from  their  re- 
spective places  of  concealment  glowering  at 
124 


JUST  LOOKING 

each  other  and  exhibiting  toward  me  the  same 
combination  of  distraction  and  impatience 
that  a  housewife  manifests  when  she  comes  to 
the  front  door  with  biscuit  dough  on  her  hands 
and  flour  in  her  hair.  Each  seeing  the  other 
apparently  prepared  to  enter  upon  the  hateful 
task  of  selling  me  something,  both  would  start 
back  to  the  places  whence  they  came.  A  vehe- 
ment "Who's  going  to  wait  on  me?"  would 
cause  them  to  turn  around  again  and  stare 
blankly  at  me  and  accusingly  at  each  other. 
Then,  after  an  exchange  of  instructions  about 
filling  this  and  emptying  that,  one  of  them 
would  detach  himself  from  the  really  important 
duties  of  his  position  and  more  or  less  grudg- 
ingly hand  out  the  article  which  I  desired  to 
purchase.  I  really  have  n't  exaggerated. 

That  sort  of  thing  happened  not  only  once, 
but  several  times.  Suppose  that  I  had  n't 
known  exactly  what  I  wanted  or  had  merely 
desired  to  look  at  something  that  I  wasn't 
quite  ready  to  buy.  Do  you  believe  that  either 
of  those  salesmen  could  have  concealed  his 
sense  of  disgust  and  indignity? 
125 


SALESMANSHIP 

Having  something  more  important  to  do  is 
the  reason  why  a  good  many  salesmen  have 
no  time  for  lookers.  It  is  a  curious  thing  that 
a  clerk  who  is  hired  to  sell  goods  and  keep  the 
store  swept  out  always  dislikes  to  have  a  cus- 
tomer interrupt  the  sweeping  of  the  store;  the 
same  of  arranging  stock  or  the  doing  of  any 
of  the  other  manual  acts  that  salesmen  may 
be  required  to  perform.  There  seems  to  exist 
a  widespread  and  singularly  distorted  sense 
of  proportion  which  places  relatively  unim- 
portant manual  duties  above  all  else.  This  is 
not  confined  to  retail  salesmen  alone.  I  know 
a  department  head  to  whom  the  signing  of  his 
mail  at  five  o'clock  is  more  important  than  the 
deliberations  of  an  executive  conference  in 
which  the  entire  policy  of  his  department  is 
at  stake.  The  letters  are  a  tangible  thing  and 
the  signing  of  them  represents  a  definite  ac- 
complishment, while  a  question  of  policy — • 
well,  it 's  just  a  question  of  policy,  that 's  all. 

Two  other  causes  that  prompt  some  sales- 
people to  dislike  lookers  are  laziness  on  the 
part  of  the  sales-people  and  rebellion  against 
126 


JUST  LOOKING 

their  lot.  It  is  next  to  useless  to  discuss  lazi- 
ness, either  physical  or  mental,  so  why 
should  we  attempt  to  do  it  here?  Nor  is  there 
any  reason  why  we  should  try  to  intervene 
between  an  unjust  fate  and  its  oppression  of  a 
discontented  or  unambitious  sales-person.  If 
a  salesman  wants  to  quarrel  with  his  bread 
and  butter,  let  him  do  so.  It  would  be  like 
interfering  in  a  family  feud  for  us  to  attempt 
to  dissuade  him. 

To  retail  clerks  who  are  not  salesmen, 
lookers  will  always  be  abhorrent.  To  retail 
clerks  who  are  salesmen,  a  looker  is  an  im- 
portant selling  problem  and  provokes  neither 
impatience,  discourtesy,  nor  a  sense  of  injury. 
As  is  true  of  most  problems  of  retail  salesman- 
ship, the  best  way  to  prepare  yourself  to 
handle  lookers  is  to  learn  your  merchandise 
so  thoroughly  that  you  can  always  talk  inter- 
estingly and  convincingly  about  it. 

If  I  were  a  retail  merchant  I  should  en- 
courage my  sales-people  to  encourage  look- 
ing not  only  in  their  own  departments,  but 
also  in  other  departments  of  the  store.  I 
127 


SALESMANSHIP 

would  establish  reciprocal  relations  between 
various  departments.  For  example,  I  would 
ask  the  salesmen  in  the  woman's  shoe  depart- 
ment to  do  a  little  promotion  work  for  the 
glove  department,  and  vice  versa.  When  a 
woman  shopper  has  completed  her  purchases 
in  the  shoe  department,  is  there  any  reason 
why  the  salesman  should  not  mention  some 
particularly  alluring  value  or  style  in  the  glove 
department,  and  if  madame  shows  the  slight- 
est sign  of  interest,  is  there  any  reason  why  the 
shoe  salesman  should  n't  say,  "  If  you  have 
five  minutes  to  spare,  I  think  it's  quite  worth 
your  while  to  see  those  gloves.  Here,  I  '11  write 
it  on  this  slip.  If  you  '11  give  that  to  any  of  the 
sales-people  in  the  glove  department,  you'll 
get  prompt  service."  How  would  madame 
feel  about  it?  Regard  it  as  an  impertinence? 
No,  not  if  it  was  properly  done,  for  a  courteous 
act  gracefully  done  is  never  counted  an  im- 
pertinence, and  would  n't  this,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  be  a  most  effective  way  of  expressing 
appreciation  of  madame's  patronage?  What 
would  the  shoe  salesman  think  about  it?  If  he 
128 


JUST  LOOKING 

knew  that  the  number  of  the  slips  turned  in 
at  the  glove  department  with  his  initials  on 
them  might  have  something  to  do  with  the 
"  old  man's  "  estimate  of  his  value  to  the  store, 
I'm  sure  he'd  feel  at  least  a  little  interest  in 
sending  lookers  to  the  glove  department  and 
such  other  departments  as  were  put  on  his 
list  from  time  to  time. 

Yes,  sir,  if  I  were  a  retail  merchant  or  a  re- 
tail salesman,  I'd  pay  a  lot  of  attention  to 
lookers. 


BUYING 

THE  easiest  way  to  define  buying  is  to  say 
that  buying  is  the  exact  opposite  of  selling. 
That 's  the  easiest  and  most  obvious  defini- 
tion, but  I  think  it's  a  long  way  from  the  right 
one.  It  would  be  closer  to  the  truth  to  say  that 
buying  is  just  a  form  of  selling.  Why  not? 
When  you  buy,  are  n't  you  selling  your  dol- 
lars for  the  other  fellow's  goods  ?  Are  n't  you 
trying  to  sell  your  dollars  at  the  highest  possi- 
ble price  and  to  the  greatest  possible  advan- 
tage? Perhaps  you  don't  always  do  it,  but,  if 
not,  you  can  comfort  yourself  with  the  re- 
flection that  for  every  bad  buyer  there's  a 
rotten  salesman,  too. 

A  buyer  ought  to  be  a  mighty  happy  fellow, 
for  he  is  a  salesman  whose  customers  insist  on 
buying  from  him.  He  can  tell  them  he  does  n't 
want  to  sell — refuse  to  sell,  in  fact.  He  can 
be  as  churlish  as  he  chooses,  and  within  cer- 
130 


BUYING 

tain  limitations  he  can  be  downright  insult- 
ing. He  can  be  snippier  than  the  snippiest 
salesgirl  ever  dared  to  be.  He  can  act  as  im- 
portant and  independent  as  the  conductor  of 
a  passenger  local.  Any  of  you  who  have  ever 
ridden  on  one  of  those  solid  day-coach,  sun- 
lighted  "Congressional  District  Limiteds" 
that  stop  for  ventilation  at  every  station, 
know  that  a  conductor  on  a  local  is  a  pretty 
important  and  independent  person.  Yes,  sir, 
a  buyer  can  pull  all  of  that  stuff  —  and  more 
• —  without  driving  away  the  people  who  want 
to  buy  his  dollars.  He  can  do  it  if  he  wants 
to,  and  even  if  he  does  n't,  it  surely  must  be  a 
great  satisfaction  to  him  to  know  that  he 
could  if  he  would. 

Before  the  days  of  automobiles,  'way  back 
in  those  good  old  days  when  you  used  to  own 
a  "buggy  horse,"  did  you  ever  rise  up  in  revolt 
against  the  exactions  of  the  feed-man  and 
drive  out  on  Sunday  —  or  some  other  day  — 
to  get  in  touch  with  the  actual  producer  of 
equine  foodstuffs  ?  In  those  days,  if  you  lived 
in  the  right  kind  of  a  town,  it's  almost  a  cinch 


SALESMANSHIP 

that  one  afternoon  in  the  eighties  or  nineties 
you  took  the  cushion  off  the  back  seat  of  the 
surrey,  put  a  couple  of  the  feed-store's  sacks 
under  the  seat,  and  started  off  with  old  Dobbin 
to  rustle  up  his  supper  on  the  direct-from- 
producer-to-consumer  plan. 

How  did  you  come  out?  Tell  the  truth.  Did 
n't  you  almost  have  to  beg  to  get  two  bush- 
els of  corn,  although  you  could  see  where  the 
corncrib  was  propped  up  with  green  saplings 
to  keep  it  from  bursting  out  at  the  waistline, 
and  you  knew  the  farmer  had  a  mortgage  on 
his  farm,  and  was  a  whole  lot  more  welcome 
at  the  grocery  store  when  he  had  butter,  eggs, 
or  cash  than  when  he  said,  "Just  put  that  in 
with  the  rest  I  owe  you"?  And  what  did  you 
have  to  pay?  It's  been  a  long  time  now  and 
you  don't  need  to  be  afraid  to  tell.  Don't  tell 
me  what  you  told  the  feed-man  when  he  came 
to  your  stable  for  his  sacks  and  found  them 
full  of  corn  —  full  of  corn  untainted  by  the 
middleman's  loathsome  touch.  What  did  that 
corn  actually  cost?  Well,  never  mind  what  it 
cost.  I  won't  press  you  on  that  point.  But 
132 


BUYING 

was  n't  the  old  fanner  a  salesman?  You  prob- 
ably called  him  an  old  skinflint  at  that  time, 
but  in  reality  he  was  just  a  good  salesman  — 
a  salesman  who  held  on  to  his  corn  the  same 
way  that  a  good  buyer  hangs  on  to  his  dollars. 

I  don't  know  much  about  buying.  There 
are  people  who  do,  but  they  know  so  much 
about  it  that  they  can't  explain  it  to  me  so  I 
can  explain  it  to  you.  My  friend  Harry  Leem- 
ing  is  a  buyer.  He  knows  pretty  nearly  every- 
thing there  is  to  know  about  buying.  He  is 
the  president  or  something  of  the  Purchasing 
Agents'  Protective  Association,  or  whatever 
they  call  it.  I  bought  him  a  luncheon  the 
other  day,  expecting  to  get  at  least  a  thousand 
words  out  of  him.  I  got  ten  thousand,  but  I 
can't  use  many  of  them.  You  see  I  don't  give 
you  credit  for  having  any  more  intelligence 
than  I  have,  and  buying  as  explained  by  a 
buyer  is  entirely  too  scientific  for  me. 

What  I  tell  you  about  buying  will  mostly 

have  to  be  ideas  that  I  have  doped  out  all  by 

myself.    I'm  a  pretty  poor  buyer,  so  you 

must  n't  pay  much  attention  to  what  I  say. 

133 


SALESMANSHIP 

One  of  my  troubles  as  a  buyer  is  that  I'm  too 
sympathetic,  imaginative,  and  susceptible. 
The  one  thing  that  helps  my  batting  average 
as  a  buyer  is  the  fact  that  I  am  of  Scotch  de- 
scent and  have  a  friendly  feeling  for  a  dollar. 
I  like  dollars  so  well  that  I  hate  to  part  com- 
pany with  them.  That's  a  great  thing  in  buying. 
Love  for  a  dollar  helps  to  make  a  good  buyer. 
Out  in  Denver  there  is,  or  used  to  be,  a 
saloon  with  a  lot  of  silver  dollars  embedded 
in  the  floor.  I  think  every  buyer  should  have 
a  silver  dollar  embedded  in  his  desk-top,  and 
before  he  signs  an  order  (unless  his  concern  is 
insolvent),  he  should  say  to  that  dollar,  "Dear 
Dollar,  I  am  about  to  separate  our  bank  ac- 
count from  a  lot  of  dollars  just  like  you.  I 
wonder  if  the  thing  I  'm  going  to  get  is  worth 
the  price  I'm  going  to  pay?"  When  a  buyer 
propounds  that  question  to  his  enshrined  dol- 
lar and  fails  to  get  the  oracle  to  answer,  "Go 
ahead,  old  chap,"  I  think  it  would  be  a  mighty 
good  plan  for  the  buyer  to  say  to  the  salesman, 
"Pm  going  to  take  a  little  time  to  think  this 


over." 


134 


BUYING 

Firstly,  I  believe  that  a  buyer  must  acquire 
the  proper  respect  and  affection  for  a  dollar. 
Of  course,  that  isn't  the  only  qualification  of 
a  buyer,  for  if  it  were,  all  the  buyers  would 
be  Scots  or  Jews,  which,  by  the  way,  a  good 
many  of  them  are.  And  say,  would  n't  you 
salesmen  rather  tackle  almost  any  other  kind 
of  buyer  than  a  "Mac"  or  a  "stein"? 

Secondly,  when  a  buyer  buys,  it  ought  to  be 
something  that  he  knows  he  needs  and  is  sure 
he  won't  have  to  keep  unless  he  wants  to  keep 
it.  Maybe  the  buyer  does  n't  know  he  needs 
it  nor  how  easily  his  house  can  get  rid  of  it  at 
a  profit,  until  the  salesman  tells  him;  but  if 
that  is  the  case,  he  ought  to  make  sure  that 
the  salesman  is  right.  Salesmen  are  occasion- 
ally wrong  in  their  estimates  of  a  buyer's 
need  and  the  public's  demand  for  the  goods 
the  salesmen  are  trying  to  sell  to  the  buyer. 
Of  course,  no  real  salesman  is  a  liar,  but  his 
enthusiasm  sometimes  proves  to  be  a  potent 
substitute  for  falsehood.  A  buyer  should  never 
forget  that  he  is  ultimately  a  salesman.  He 
should  remember  that  he  is  not  only  selling 
135 


SALESMANSHIP 

dollars,  but  is  also  buying  something  that 
must  be  sold  again  in  some  form  or  other.  The 
thing  he  buys  may  be  a  line  of  tennis  blazers 
for  his  haberdashery,  or  a  trainload  of  wheat 
flour  for  his  cracker  factory.  Whatever  it  is, 
the  buyer  must  consider  its  salability.  How 
many  tennis  blazers  will  his  trade  absorb  and 
how  will  the  flour  taste  when  made  into 
crackers.  Somebody  else  has  probably  de- 
cided how  many  crackers  should  be  sold  dur- 
ing the  next  three  months,  but  it's  up  to  the 
buyer  to  decide  whether  this  buyable  flour 
will  make  salable  crackers.  A  good  buy  will 
sometimes  help  to  make  a  good  sell,  but  a  poor 
sell  always  makes  a  poor  buy. 

I  have  already  said  a  good  bit  about  buying 
without  giving  any  one  the  slightest  idea  of 
how  to  be  a  buyer.  Frankly,  I  don't  know  how, 
and  apparently  the  fellows  who  do  know  can't 
tell.  If  all  the  buyers  in  the  world  were 
brought  together  in  a  great  big  musical  ensem- 
ble, they  could,  without  any  rehearsals,  tear 
the  roof  off  with  that  beautiful  old  folk-song 
of  the  purchasing  agents'  guild,  "I  don't  know 
136 


BUYING 

how  I  do  it,  but  I  do."  Encore,  "I  get  by 
when  I  buy  for  the  sweet  bye  and  bye."  Sec- 
ond encore,  "Time  cures  heartaches  and 
buyers'  mistakes."  (Notice  to  K.  &  E., 
Messrs.  Shubert,  and  other  producing  man- 
agers; also  to  all  publishers  of  sheet-music 
and  every  person  lyrically  inclined :  All  rights 
are  reserved  in  the  above  titles.  I  take  this 
precaution  because  I  have  always  intended  to 
write  the  book  and  lyrics  for  a  musical  show 
that  would  really  interest  the  "tired  business 
men"  of  Albany  and  points  west,  who  clog  up 
Broadway  and  crowd  native  New  Yorkers  into 
the  gutter  and  away  from  the  bars  in  Times 
Square.) 

I  had  planned  to  divide  the  subject  of  buy- 
ing into  several  texts  and  preach  a  little  from 
each.  You  can  see  for  yourself  that  I  have 
gone  as  far  as  "secondly."  But  my  "sec- 
ondly" hasn't  brought  us  any  closer  to  the 
point  than  my  "firstly,"  so  I  am  going  to 
abandon  texts  altogether.  Notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  people  who  know  all  about  buy- 
ing can't  reduce  the  subject  to  fundamental 
137 


SALESMANSHIP 

texts,  I,  knowing  so  little,  had  thought  I  might 
be  able  to  sum  up  my  knowledge  neatly  and 
concisely.  But  I  find  that  I  can't,  and  I  am 
going  to  wade  right  into  the  subject  like  a  hun- 
gry negro  into  a  "battle  royal." 

Excepting  women  only,  buyers  stand  at  the 
top  of  the  hunted  class.  The  long-continued 
oppression  of  any  race  of  people  inevitably 
produces  racial  characteristics  of  craft  and 
guile.  Likewise  the  ages  through  which  women 
have  been  pursued  by  men  have  produced  in 
them  certain  instinctive  tactics  of  defense. 
Let  it  be  said,  either  to  the  credit  of  buyers' 
intelligence  or  the  ardor  of  salesmen,  that  a 
buyer  will  ordinarily  learn  in  ten  years  nearly 
all  that  women  have  learned  since  the  day 
of  Mother  Eve  about  the  art  of  mental  self- 
defense. 

In  some  respects  buyers  and  women  employ 
similar  methods.  I  can  think  of  one  illustra- 
tion of  this  which  may  have  come  within  the 
experience  of  you  salesmen.  When  a  woman, 
without  anger  or  other  marked  emotion,  asks 
you  a  question  and  looks  straight  into  your 
138 


BUYING 

eyes  while  you  answer  her,  you  can  ordinarily 
rest  assured  that  your  answer  —  no  matter 
what  it  is  —  will  not  materially  affect  her 
heart-beats.  But  if  she  cloaks  with  their  lids 
or  turns  away  her  eyes,  meanwhile  mani- 
festing absorbed  interest  in  her  fan,  it's  a 
pretty  safe  bet  that  her  question  has  a  well- 
defined  purpose  and  that  she  awaits  your  an- 
swer with  some  degree  of  eagerness  and  sus- 
pense. There  is  a  substantial  equivalent  for 
this  in  the  conduct  of  the  average  buyer.  If 
a  buyer  looks  searchingly  at  you  and  asks  a 
pertinent  question,  such  as  the  lowest  price 
you  can  make  him,  the  chances  are  that  he 
is  merely  accumulating  statistics  for  his  card 
file.  But  if  he  toys  with  a  paper-knife  and 
looks  out  of  the  window  when  he  asks  his 
question,  the  probabilities  are  that  you  have 
succeeded  in  getting  pretty  close  to  the  last 
lap  of  a  sale.  It  is  difficult  for  me  to  consider 
buying  from  any  except  the  selling  stand- 
point, but  if  I  am  to  become  temporarily  a 
renegade  and  ensconce  myself  on  the  buyer's 
side  of  the  wicket,  I  feel  duty  bound  to  advise 
139 


SALESMANSHIP 

buyers  to  go  counter  to  their  instincts  in  this 
and  a  good  many  of  the  other  cute  little  tricks 
that  buyers  instinctively  pick  up.  Remember 
that  the  hunter  naturally  studies  the  habits 
and  stratagems  of  his  quarry.  Quite  as  nat- 
urally, salesmen  become  familiar  with  most 
of  the  "stalls"  that  buyers  use.  A  buyer  who 
"stalls"  is  in  greater  danger  of  "tipping  his 
hand"  to  a  salesman  than  he  would  be  if 
he  did  n't  stall.  As  a  general  proposition  it 
does  n't  pay  a  buyer  to  stall. 

No,  not  at  all;  the  foregoing  statement  is 
not  inconsistent  with  my  admiration  for  the 
methods  pursued  by  the  old  farmer  who  sold 
you  those  two  sacks  of  corn.  The  farmer 
did  n't  stall.  He  was  sincere.  He  had  planted 
and  ploughed  that  corn;  gambled  with  spring 
floods,  summer  droughts,  and  autumn  frosts; 
stood  off  his  creditors  when  they  wanted  him 
to  sell  the  corn  as  soon  as  it  was  husked;  and 
skimped  through  the  winter  without  selling 
a  bushel.  When  you  drove  out  to  his  place 
the  new  crop  did  n't  look  promising  and  those 
fellows  up  in  Chicago  were  starting  a  bull 
140 


BUYING 

movement.  There  was  no  telling  where  "corn 
would  go."  That  old  farmer  had  been  through 
enough  to  make  him  place  a  proper  value  on 
his  corn  and  he  was  reluctant  to  part  with 
even  two  bushels  of  it.  If  a  buyer  knows  the 
value  of  a  dollar  and  is  reluctant  to  part  with 
his  firm's  dollars,  that  ingrained  reluctance, 
frankly  and  unreservedly  expressed,  is  more 
effective  than  almost  any  stall  he  can  use. 

If  a  buyer  has  a  bad  liver  or  an  unreliable 
digestive  equipment,  or  is  a  natural-born 
grouch  and  can't  conceal  those  facts,  I  suppose 
he  can't  be  blamed.  But  if  he  is  able  to  con- 
ceal them  from  the  president  of  his  company, 
he  ought  to  conceal  them  from  the  salesmen 
who  call  on  him.  I  am  sure  there  is  noth- 
ing to  be  gained  by  being  nasty  with  a  sales- 
man. If  you  are  a  sure-enough  buyer  and  love 
a  dollar  well  enough,  the  salesman  can't  make 
you  buy  his  goods  unless  they  are  something 
that  you  really  should  buy.  When  you  are 
insolent  to  a  salesman  it  is  more  than  likely 
to  make  the  salesman  think  you  are  afraid  of 
him  —  afraid  he  will  be  able  to  sell  you  some- 
141 


SALESMANSHIP 

thing  you  don't  want.  The  salesman  may  very 
possibly  say  to  himself,  "Here's  another 
'bush-league'  buyer."  You  know  what  he 
means.  Bush-league  ball-players  do  a  lot  of 
umpire  baiting  to  cover  up  "bonehead"  plays, 
just  as  a  good  many  buyers  bluster  at  sales- 
men because  they  have  n't  worked  out  the 
fine  points  of  the  buying  game  and  don't 
know  of  anything  else  to  do.  I  don't  think 
you  should  let  the  salesmen  get  you  tabbed 
for  a  bush-leaguer.  If  you  do,  most  of  them 
will  hand  you  their  bush-league  propositions. 
A  buyer  may  be  buying  for  a  bush-league 
store,  but  he  wants  major-league  proposi- 
tions. 

I'll  admit  that  it's  a  lot  of  fun  to  offer  to 
fight  a  Quaker  —  almost  as  much  fun  as  tell- 
ing a  risque  story  to  a  clean-minded  man.  It's 
also  a  lot  of  fun  to  bulldoze  a  waiter  or  pro- 
fanely send  an  overdone  steak  back  to  the 
kitchen.  It's  easy  to  be  what  Broadway's 
initiated  call  a  waiter-fighter,  but  I  don't 
know  whether  it  pays.  A  friend  of  mine,  who 
is  a  retired  waiter,  says  it  does  n't.  Says  he, 
142 


BUYING 

"Never  cuss  a  waiter  and  never  send  any- 
thing back  to  a  cook.  If  you  can't  eat  what 
the  cook  sends  you,  it's  better  to  refuse  to 
pay  for  it  than  to  send  it  back.  —  Thanks,  I  '11 
take  a  glass  of  Pilsner.  —  You  see  you  can't 
ever  tell  what  a  waiter  or  a  cook  will  do  to  you 
if  you  get  'em  sore." 

Salesmen  are  almost  as  dangerous  as  waiters 
and  cooks.  You  never  can  tell  when  a  sales- 
man will  be  able  to  do  something  to  you  or 
what  it  will  be.  It  is  well  for  a  buyer  to  con- 
sider that  the  salesman's  house  sees  the  buy- 
er's house  through  the  salesman's  eyes,  and 
that  the  salesman  is  frequently  the  arbiter  of 
many  of  the  disputes  that  arise  between  the 
buyer  and  the  salesman's  employers.  Further- 
more, a  buyer  does  n't  always  succeed  in  ex- 
tracting a  large  amount  of  immediate  satis- 
faction from  bullying  a  salesman,  for  there 
are  some  salesmen  who  make  a  practice  of 
matching  insolence  with  insolence,  on  the 
theory  that  a  bullying  buyer  is  a  "bluffer" 
and  needs  to  have  "his  bluff  called."  Is  that 
good  salesmanship  ?  We  are  n't  talking  about 
H3 


SALESMANSHIP 

the  selling  end  of  salesmanship,  but  about  the 
buying  end  of  salesmanship,  so  I  shan't  at- 
tempt to  answer  the  question.  However,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  you  never  saw  a  salesman 
being  thrown  out  of  a  buyer's  office  or  carried 
out  on  a  stretcher,  did  you  ? 

Getting  right  down  to  brass  tacks,  a  buyer 
should  n't  stall,  or  pose,  or  try  to  gratify  his 
vanity,  or  indulge  his  domineering  spirit,  but 
he  should  endeavor  to  impress  the  salesman 
as  quickly  and  as  fully  as  possible  with  the 
following  idea:  "We  have  dollars  to  sell  for 
merchandise  that  will  make  more  dollars.  Our 
dollars  are  the  best  dollars  and  are  worth 
more  to  you  than  any  other  dollars  in  this 
town  because  we  are  the  biggest,  or  the  best, 
or  the  most  aggressive,  or  the  most  intelligent, 
or  the  most  fashionable,"  —  or  whatever  it  is 
that  makes  the  buyer's  dollars  the  best  dol- 
lars. In  other  words,  a  buyer  ought  to  try  to 
sell  his  dollars  to  the  salesman  just  as  the 
salesman  tries  to  sell  his  merchandise  to  the 
buyer.  Anybody  can  huddle  up  like  a  moult- 
ing canary  and  listen  dejectedly  to  a  sales- 
144 


BUYING 

man's  talk,  but  it  takes  a  real,  genuine  buyer 
to  sell  his  firm's  dollars  to  a  salesman  to  the 
best  possible  advantage. 

An  order  placed  with  a  salesman  at  the  ex- 
treme discount  and  dating,  with  every  con- 
cession included,  is  frequently  not  a  pur- 
chase until  the  salesman's  house  says,  "We 
accept."  In  other  words,  you  may  put  it  over 
on  the  salesman  without  putting  it  over  on 
the  house.  The  best  way  to  draw  forth  the 
last  drop  of  discount,  dating,  and  concession 
from  both  the  salesman  and  the  salesman's 
house  is  to  make  the  salesman  believe  that 
your  dollars  are  the  best  dollars  in  your  town 
—  or  territory.  A  buyer  should  try  to  put  a 
salesman  in  a  position  where  the  latter  be- 
lieves and  writes  the  following  to  his  house, 
"Inclosed  find  order  from  So-and-So.  You 
will  note  that  I  have  gone  the  limit  with  these 
people.  The  reason  I  did  so  is  because  they 
are  the  best  people  in  town,"  etc.,  etc.  Re- 
member, "they  all  look  good,  when  they're 
far  away,"  and  if  you  make  it  strong  enough 
with  the  salesman,  he  will  probably  be  able 
145 


SALESMANSHIP 

to  make  it  strong  enough  with  his  house. 
Of  course,  there  are  concerns  which  have 
only  one  discount.  You  could  hypnotize  one 
of  their  salesmen  and  get  him  to  play  dead  or 
let  you  stick  pins  in  him  without  getting  better 
than  the  "  regular  discount."  There  is  "  possy- 
tively  nothing  doing"  on  an  "extra  five,"  or 
anything  like  that,  but  at  the  same  time  I 
think  that  the  buyer  who  convinces  one  of 
these  salesmen  that  the  buyer's  house  has  the 
best  dollars  in  town  may  get  a  little  better 
service  for  those  dollars,  even  if  he  can't  get 
a  better  price.  And  certainly  the  best  way  for 
a  buyer  to  make  sure  that  the  "regular  dis- 
count" is  the  "extreme  discount"  is  to  make 
his  firm's  dollars  look  big  to  the  salesman. 
After  all,  our  first  text  was  n't  so  bad,  for  we 
reach  an  ultimate  conclusion  which  is  very 
nearly  "on  all  fours"  with  the  first  text,  be- 
cause we  have  to  admit  that  a  buyer  who  loves 
his  dollars  well  enough  can  describe  them  to  a 
salesman  in  such  a  way  that  the  salesman  will 
go  the  limit  to  get  some  of  them.  That  is 
enough  for  the  first  text,  although  I  have  a 
146 


BUYING 

suspicion  that  we  shall  work  back  to  it  again 
before  we  are  through. 

Now  to  get  back  to  bullying  salesmen: 
while  I  don't  think  a  buyer  should  be  a  bully, 
neither  do  I  think  a  buyer  should  let  a  sales- 
man get  the  bit  in  his  teeth.  A  first-class 
salesman  works  up  his  selling  methods  and 
selling  talk  with  a  view  to  their  psychological 
effect,  if  you  want  to  call  it  that.  Maybe 
you're  not  afraid  of  psychological  effects. 
I  am.  Any  one  should  be  who  will  pay  a  pre- 
mium to  Tyson's  for  theater  tickets,  sit  next 
to  a  bad  breath,  and  get  worked  up  to  a  point 
where  he  sincerely  hopes  the  leading  man  will 
win  the  heart  and  hand  of  the  star,  although 
he  knows  that  in  real  life  the  star  is  the  lead- 
ing man's  grandmother.  If  dramatists  and 
actors  can  get  me  going  on  that  kind  of  prop- 
osition, why  can't  a  good  salesman  get  me 
going  on  his  proposition?  He  can —  if  I  am 
not  careful.  Mr.  Belasco  can  work  up  to  a 
dramatic  situation  that  will  carry  you  off  your 
feet  if  you  remain  silent  and  attentive,  but 
he  can't  create  a  situation  that  won't  fall  flat 
H7 


SALESMANSHIP 

if  you  should  shoot  out  an  irreverent  question 
in  the  midst  of  it.  The  same  method  works 
pretty  well  with  salesmen. 

Some  time  ago  a  salesman  came  to  us  with 
a  proposition  of  such  proportions  and  so  much 
out  of  the  ordinary  that  the  people  downstairs 
would  n't  touch  it.  They  sent  it  right  up  to 
the  top  floor.  The  salesman  who  had  this 
proposition  in  charge  was  "some"  salesman. 
We  had  heard  of  him  and  we  made  an  ap- 
pointment with  him  in  the  same  spirit  as  a 
man  who  was  going  to  fight  a  duel  would 
assent  to  the  time,  place,  and  weapons.  The 
day  and  hour  arrived.  The  salesman  had  so 
much  to  show  us  that  it  could  n't  be  spread 
out  on  an  ordinary  desk,  so  we  took  him  to 
the  directors'  room  and  let  him  set  the  stage 
to  suit  himself.  He  got  us  to  sit  down  and 
then  maneuvered  himself  into  a  position  where 
he  would  have  the  light  on  us,  just  as  an  ex- 
perienced duelist  should.  There  were  two  of 
us  and  only  one  of  him,  but  notwithstanding 
that,  we  were  pretty  evenly  matched.  This 
salesman  spoke  with  a  soft  drawl  that  was 
148 


BUYING 

difficult  to  identify  with  any  particular  local- 
ity. My  associate  said  afterwards  he  thought 
the  man  was  a  Southerner.  I  was  of  the  opin- 
ion that  he  got  his  accent  along  the  north 
shore  of  the  Ohio  at  some  place  like  Shawnee- 
town,  Illinois;  but  it  isn't  material  whether 
he  was  Southerner  or  Northerner,  for  he  was 
surely  a  corking  good  salesman.  He  did  not 
speak  fluently,  although  it  was  probably  an 
effort  for  him  not  to  do  so.  He  interpolated 
his  arguments  with  quaint  colloquialisms,  and 
after  he  had  driven  home  a  point  with  impres- 
sive emphasis,  he  would  sugar-coat  it  with  an 
engaging  smile  and  some  self-depreciative  and 
ungrammatical  remark,  such  as,  "'Course,  I 
may  be  wrong,  but  it  looks  thataway  to  me. 
You  gentlemen  know  better  than  me." 

To  make  a  long  story  short,  this  man  had 
a  perfectly  impossible  proposition  fromj  our 
standpoint.  It  would  have  taken  thousands  of 
our  dollars  and  it  was  n't  even  a  good  gamble 
—  at  least,  I  did  n't  think  it  was  before  I  went 
into  the  directors'  room  that  morning  nor 
after  I  came  out.  But  when  I  was  in  there, 
149 


SALESMANSHIP 

inhaling  the  opium  distilled  by  this  human 
poppy,  the  proposition  looked  pretty  good. 
I  felt  myself  slipping.  My  associate  was  al- 
ready stretched  out  on  a  cloud.  We  came  very 
near  spilling  the  beans.  Just  one  thing  saved 
us.  I  was  on  the  point  of  being  wafted  out  of 
my  chair  and  out  of  my  mind  like  a  thistle- 
down, when  I  noticed  that  great  beads  of 
perspiration  were  breaking  out  on  this  sales- 
man's forehead.  It  was  a  chilly  morning  and 
the  steam  was  n't  on  in  the  directors'  room. 
In  spite  of  his  easy  and  ingenuous  manner  this 
salesman  was  using  the  last  ounce  in  him. 
After  all,  he  was  only  a  salesman  —  a  very- 
good  salesman,  but  a  very  human  and  com- 
mencing to  be  a  very  sweaty  one.  The  spell 
was  broken  and  we  commenced  to  ask  him 
questions.  When  he  seemed  to  be  approach- 
ing a  climax  in  his  argument,  we  interrupted 
him  with  a  question  and  made  him  answer  it 
before  he  proceeded.  At  the  first  question,  he 
looked  annoyed,  at  the  second  he  stammered, 
and  at  the  fifth  he  commenced  to  gather  up 
his  papers. 

150 


BUYING 

There  you  have  it.  Don't  let  a  salesman 
pull  off  his  sales  talk  in  exactly  the  way  he  has 
it  planned;  spoil  his  climaxes  just  as  a  piping 
voice  from  the  gallery  sometimes  spoils  an 
intense  and  convincing  dramatic  situation  on 
the  stage.  But  don't  ask  obvious  questions, 
because  a  good  salesman  is  usually  ready  for 
them.  He  generally  has  a  version  of  his  sell- 
ing talk  that  will  turn  any  such  question  to 
his  own  advantage.  When  you  ask  a  salesman 
a  question  and  he  says  he 's  glad  you  asked  it, 
but  nevertheless  goes  ahead  with  his  regular 
line  of  talk  without  answering  the  question, 
don't  let  him  get  away  with  it;  stop  him  and 
make  him  answer  the  question  at  the  point 
where  you  asked  it. 

When  a  buyer  is  up  against  a  good  sales- 
man, he  should  break  up  the  salesman's  at- 
tack at  frequent  intervals.  Interrupting  the 
salesman  by  asking  non-committal  questions 
is  one  way;  another  is  to  check  him  on  any 
line  of  talk  that  does  not  interest  you.  If  a 
buyer,  like  a  judge  in  speaking  to  a  lawyer, 
will  say,  "Mr.  Salesman,  pass  on  from  that 


SALESMANSHIP 

point  to  any  other  you  care  to  present,"  it  will 
ordinarily  throw  the  salesman  out  of  his  stride 
and  strip  off  the  artifices  of  salesmanship. 
Don't  let  a  salesman  feel  that  he  has  got  you 
going.  You  can't  prevent  him  from  feeling 
that  way  by  looking  out  of  the  window  or 
yawning.  He  is  familiar  with  that  sort  of 
thing,  and  if  you  let  him  get  in  all  of  his  talk 
just  as  he  has  it  rehearsed,  the  average  sales- 
man has  enough  confidence  in  himself  to  be- 
lieve that  you  can't  help  being  impressed.  If 
you  want  the  best  a  salesman  has  to  give,  you 
must  not  let  him  think  he  has  made  an  impres- 
sion on  you,  and  the  surest  way  to  prevent  it 
is  politely  to  obstruct  his  efforts  to  marshal 
his  arguments  in  the  order  and  manner  which 
experience  has  taught  him  to  be  almost  un- 
failingly effective.  Remember,  it  is  n't  so  much 
what  you  think  as  what  the  salesman  thinks 
you  think  that  precipitates  the  bargain  which 
you  seek. 

Suppose  we  now  try  to  work  around  to  our 
second  text.  A  number  of  years  ago,  I  was  in 
Kansas  City  and  ran  out  of  clean  shirts.   I 
152 


BUYING 

visited  the  shirt  department  of  a  large  cloth- 
ing store.  They  had  a  large  quantity  of  shirts 
in  my  size,  but  not  a  single  pattern  that  I 
could  wear.  Honestly,  you  never  saw  such  a 
bunch  of  shirts  in  your  life.  Finally,  I  asked 
the  salesman  if  he  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
buying.  In  heartfelt  tones  he  answered  that 
he  had  not.  Pressed  a  little  further,  he  ex- 
plained that  the  buying  was  done  by  a  mem- 
ber of  the  firm.  "He's  the  closest  buyer  in 
Kansas  City,"  the  salesman  proudly  asserted; 
"but  he's  so  busy  that  after  he  gets  the  price 
where  he  wants  it,  he  does  n't  have  much 
time  to  pick  out  the  patterns."  I'm  sure  that 
most  of  the  stickers  are  bought  by  buyers  who 
spend  so  much  time  getting  the  price  where 
they  want  it  that  they  don't  have  much  time 
or  energy  left  to  "pick  out  the  patterns."  If 
a  buyer  does  not  keep  constantly  in  mind  that 
he  is  buying  to  sell  again,  and  that  the  ready 
salability  of  the  article  bought  is  as  important 
as  the  price  paid,  he  is  pretty  certain  to  buy  a 
good  many  stickers.  A  buyer  should  be  some- 
thing more  than  a  skillful  swapper  of  dollars 
153 


SALESMANSHIP 

for  yards  or  pounds  or  dozens  of  merchandise. 
Many  a  retail  store  with  a  good  location  and 
a  top  rating  in  the  credit  guides  is  held  back 
by  its  buyers.  A  buyer  ought  to  think  of  mer- 
chandise in  terms  of  style  and  salability  as 
well  as  in  figures  of  dollars  and  cents.  If  a 
buyer  has  n't  good  taste,  if  he  does  n't  know 
the  styles  of  to-day  and  is  n't  a  pretty  accu- 
rate guesser  of  the  styles  of  to-morrow,  he 
is  n't  a  good  buyer  —  provided,  of  course,  that 
style  counts  in  the  things  he  buys. 

It  is  natural  for  buyers  to  place  price  and 
delivery  above  all  else.  They  are  important 
things,  of  course,  but  a  buyer  can  make  some 
dreadful  mistakes  if  he  becomes  too  much 
absorbed  in  these  two  points.  That  this  is  true 
of  the  buyer  who  purchases  goods  for  a  retail 
store  or  a  jobbing  house  is  so  obvious  that  it 
requires  no  discussion  here.  It  is  also  true  of 
the  purchasing  agent  of  a  manufacturing  con- 
cern. I  know  a  buyer  who  every  day  visits 
every  sales  department  and  every  manufac- 
turing department  of  the  concern  for  which  he 
buys.  With  his  ear  to  the  ground  in  every  de- 
154 


BUYING 

partment  he  is  able  to  plan  his  purchases  with 
a  full  knowledge  of  what  is  happening  and 
a  pretty  fair  conception  of  what  is  going  to 
happen.  He  does  n't  depend  on  his  shop  order 
files  alone,  and  I  think  he  has  saved  many  a 
dollar  by  his  method.  Not  every  purchasing 
agent  finds  time  to  do  this.  I  know  of  one  who 
devoted  all  of  his  time  to  studying  materials, 
prices,  and  deliveries.  No  one  could  buy  more 
cheaply  and  no  one  could  get  the  material 
into  the  factory  on  a  more  satisfactory  sched- 
ule than  he.  Yet  he  caused  his  company  to  be 
mulcted  to  the  extent  of  one  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  in  a  single  damage  suit  against  it. 
The  way  of  it  was  this:  His  company  was 
using  a  certain  material  in  large  quantities; 
he  had  maneuvered  the  price  down  as  low  as 
he  could  rget  it.  According  to  his  conception 
of  his  duties  nothing  remained  for  him  to  do 
except  to  get  better  deliveries.  In  his  char- 
acteristic way  he  went  after  the  manufacturers 
of  the  material  on  the  question  of  delivery, 
with  the  result  that  they  greatly  increased 
their  manufacturing  capacity.  It  was  a  fine 
155 


SALESMANSHIP 

piece  of  work  on  his  part,  but  unfortunately 
he  had  failed  to  inform  himself  that  the  en- 
gineers of  his  own  factory  were  developing  a 
new  material  which  would  render  useless  to 
his  factory  the  material  about  which  he  was 
so  much  concerned.  Perhaps  it  wasn't  en- 
tirely his  fault,  but  the  fact  remains  that  the 
damage  suit  would  not  have  been  brought  if 
he  had  kept  a  trifle  more  closely  in  touch  with 
the  other  departments  of  his  own  company. 

No,  it  is  n't  easy  to  be  a  good  buyer,  and 
I  don't  think  any  one  can  tell  a  man  how  to 
be  a  buyer.  Certainly  I  cannot.  Disputing  a 
salesman's  statement  that  he  has  made  you 
a  low  quotation,  excusing  yourself  to  a  sales- 
man who  has  nothing  to  interest  you,  get- 
ting rid  of  a  salesman  when  he  is  done  and 
doesn't  know  it,  are  questions  of  etiquette 
rather  than  of  buying.  You  know  as  much 
about  etiquette  as  I,  and  very  probably  you 
know  a  good  bit  more  about  buying  than  I  do. 
There  are  only  a  few  things  about  buying  that 
I  know.  One  of  them  is  that  if  you  love  a  dol- 
lar you  are  cautious  in  your  buying,  and  cau- 
156 


BUYING 

tion  is  a  quality  that  every  good  buyer  must 
have.  Not  long  ago  a  salesman  came  into  a 
factory  to  sell  some  files.  He  did  n't  ask  for  a 
large  order  until  his  files  had  been  thoroughly 
tried.  He  merely  suggested  that  the  buyer 
place  an  order  for  a  "sample  lot"  of  the  files. 
The  buyer  was  willing  to  do  that,  but  he 
wanted  to  know  just  what  the  samples  were 
going  to  cost.  A  hasty  calculation  showed  that 
the  "sample  lot"  of  files  which  the  salesman 
wanted  him  to  order  would  cost  over  a  thou- 
sand dollars.  He  did  n't  buy.  I  am  informed, 
however,  that  several  buyers  did  order  "sam- 
ple lots"  of  these  files.  You  would  n't  believe 
it  possible  in  these  days  of  signed  and  counter- 
signed buying  orders,  but  I  suppose  the  un- 
wary buyer  authorized  the  purchase  of  the 
"sample  lot  of  files"  and  subordinates  filled 
in  and  footed  the  prices.  A  buyer  who  really 
loves  a  dollar  would  not  buy  a  "sample  lot 
of  files"  without  knowing  their  exact  cost. 
True  affection  for  his  firm's  dollars  has  checked 
many  a  buyer  on  the  brink  of  a  disastrous 
purchase. 

157 


SALESMANSHIP 

We  are  back  to  our  first  text  again,  and  I 
think  we  shall  always  find  that  in  one  form  or 
other  the  love  for  a  dollar  enters  into  every 
phase  of  buying.  Even  when  a  buyer  forces 
himself  to  remember  that  salability  is  as  im- 
portant as  price,  he  does  so  because  he  thinks 
too  much  of  his  dollars  to  part  with  them  for 
goods  of  doubtful  selling  quality.  Yes,  sir, 
the  advice,  and  about  the  only  advice  I  can 
give  a  buyer,  is  to  learn  truly  to  love  his  firm's 
dollars. 


VI 

GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

MOST  of  the  adventure  was  squeezed  out  of 
the  collection  business  in  1898.  I  am  pretty 
sure  of  the  date,  for  my  youthful  zeal  as  a  col- 
lector brought  me  several  croppers  before  I  got 
accustomed  to  the  Federal  Bankruptcy  Law. 
It  was  in  1898  —  I  am  fairly  certain  of  that. 

The  Bankruptcy  Act  works  against  a  col- 
lector a  good  deal  as  ground  rules  operate 
against  a  batter.  It  is  discouraging  to  walk 
up  to  the  plate  and  bat  out  a  home  run  and 
then  be  anchored  at  second  base  by  ground 
rules.  It  is  equally  discouraging  to  travel  all 
night  on  a  local  train,  snatch  a  hasty  break- 
fast at  a  country  hotel,  rush  over  to  your 
debtor's  house  before  he  has  started  down  to 
the  "store,"  threaten  and  cajole  him  into  a 
security  settlement  —  and  then,  one  hundred 
and  nineteen  days  later,  have  to  surrender 
your  security  to  the  trustee  in  bankruptcy 
IS9 


SALESMANSHIP 

because  three  kid-gloved  creditors,  who  never 
missed  a  single  luncheon  at  their  club,  got 
together  over  a  cocktail  one  day  and  decided 
to  have  your  man  thrown  into  bankruptcy. 

The  Bankruptcy  Law  is  a  terribly  unjust 
law  if  you  happen  to  be  the  most  alert  creditor. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  you  chance  to  be  one 
of  the  creditors  who  were  asleep  at  the  switch, 
the  Bankruptcy  Act  is  a  beneficent  feature  of 
modern  commercial  law.  However,  it  pre- 
sents a  sort  of  difficulty  now,  because  this  is 
intended  to  be  an  instructive  article,  and  I 
hesitate  to  introduce  any  of  those  picturesque 
and  semi-lawless  achievements  that  stud  the 
careers  of  most  of  the  old-time  collectors.  I 
am  afraid  that  you  would  not  regard  as 
instructive  a  discussion  of  how  an  insolvent 
debtor  can  be  choked  into  giving  a  collateral 
pledge  or  a  chattel  mortgage.  The  incident 
might  be  interesting  but  it  would  not  be  in- 
structive, since  your  debtor,  when  he  had 
recovered  his  breath  and  instructed  his  lawyer 
to  cause  your  arrest  for  assault  and  battery, 
would  probably  be  advised  to  go  into  bank- 
160 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

ruptcy  and  have  your  pledge  or  mortgage  set 
aside.  Lawyers  know  that  the  deepest  revenge 
an  insolvent  debtor  can  visit  upon  a  diligent 
creditor  is  to  rob  him  of  the  fruits  of  his  dili- 
gence by  going  into  bankruptcy. 

Nowadays  collection  diligence  in  respect  of 
a  wholesale  account  is  likely  to  prove  largely 
unavailing  unless  a  considerable  degree  of 
credit  diligence  has  been  constantly  exercised 
from  the  inception  of  the  account  throughout 
each  succeeding  transaction.  The  collections 
of  a  manufacturer  or  jobber  are  for  the  most 
part  mere  incidents  in  the  daily  routine  of  an 
alert  and  well-organized  credit  department. 
It  is  only  when  a  cog  slips  in  such  a  credit  de- 
partment that  a  wholesale  collection  detaches 
itself  from  its  credit  mooring  and  floats  out  as 
a  derelict,  to  be  salvaged  by  the  collector  or 
adjuster.  With  retail  collections  it  is  quite 
different.  The  retail  credit  man  ordinarily  has 
fewer  authoritative  sources  of  information 
about  a  prospective  customer,  less  time  in 
which  to  avail  himself  of  them  and  —  most 
important  of  all  —  practically  no  means  of 
161 


SALESMANSHIP 

keeping  so  intimately  informed  about  a  cus- 
tomer's pecuniary  affairs  that  a  failing  finan- 
cial condition  can  be  detected  before  the  cus- 
tomer has  become  notoriously  delinquent.  In 
a  sense,  a  retail  credit  may  be  said  to  become 
a  collection  the  instant  it  is  made.  That  is  the 
greatest  distinction  between  the  two;  good 
wholesale  collections  depend  chiefly  on  good 
credits,  while  in  most  retail  stores  good  retail 
credits  depend  principally  on  good  collec- 
tions. 

This  brings  us  to  what  I  am  trying  to  write 
about,  namely,  collections  —  irrespective  of 
whether  they  are  wholesale  credits  gone  wrong 
or  retail  collections  that  prevent  retail  credits 
from  going  wrong. 

Naturally  a  definite  due  date  is  an  import- 
ant factor  in  collection  work.  One  of  the  most 
dangerous  things  a  credit  man  or  merchant 
can  do  when  he  extends  credit  is  to  say  —  or 
intimate  —  that  the  time  of  payment  will  be 
permitted  to  coincide  with  the  customer's  con- 
venience or  any  other  event  that  is  the  least 
uncertain  in  point  of  time.  In  extending  credit 
162 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

to  a  mechanic,  I  should  much  rather  have  his 
agreement  to  pay  me  a  dollar  per  week  for 
fifty-two  weeks  than  his  promise  to  pay  as 
quickly  as  he  can  —  even  though  a  literal 
performance  of  the  latter  undertaking  would 
probably  result  in  an  earlier  settlement  of  the 
debt.  In  opening  an  account  with  a  Missis- 
sippi merchant,  I  should  much  rather  have 
his  definite  promise  to  pay  on  December  I 
than  an  agreement  to  pay  as  soon  as  "  cotton 
commences  to  move,"  although  cotton  usually 
commences  to  move  before  December  i.  In 
collection-making,  as  well  as  in  credit-making, 
it  is  important  that  the  time  of  agreed  pay- 
ment shall  always  be  deterrninable  by  the 
calendar.  Next  to  an  absolute  refusal  to  pay 
at  any  time,  an  insolvent  debtor's  promise  to 
pay  when  he  is  "able"  and  the  collector's  im- 
potent acceptance  of  that  promise  mark  about 
the  most  hopeless  form  a  collection  can  as- 
sume. I  should  rather  take  from  an  insolvent 
debtor  an  unsecured  note  due  on  a  definite 
future  date  than  his  promise  to  pay  when  he 
is  "able,"  even  though  neither  of  us  had  any 
163 


SALESMANSHIP 

good  reason  to  believe  that  the  note  could  or 
would  be  paid  on  its  due  date. 

When  a  note  or  account  becomes  past  due 
and  has  entered  the  precarious  state,  a  credi- 
tor should  make  up  his  mind  very  promptly 
whether  he  wants  to  bring  suit  or  whether  he 
does  n't.  If  he  does  n't,  he  should  keep  the 
obligation  as  crisp  and  fresh  as  possible.  If 
he  takes  a  note,  the  creditor,  of  course,  wants 
security,  but  a  future-due  note  without  se- 
curity is  better  than  a  past-due  obligation  on 
which  the  creditor  is  unwilling  to  sue. 

I  do  not  have  in  mind  alone  the  acknowl- 
edgment of  a  debt  that  ordinarily  results  from 
the  giving  of  a  note.  Greater  than  that  are 
the  benefits  to  a  creditor  that  frequently  fol- 
low the  execution  of  a  promissory  note  or 
other  negotiable  instrument  by  a  delinquent 
debtor.  Although  scarcely  a  typical  illustra- 
tion of  what  I  have  in  mind,  I  am  moved  to 
relate  the  very  remarkable  result  that  was 
once  produced  by  a  St.  Paul  tailor's  determi- 
nation to  change  the  status  of  a  certain  de- 
linquent account.  The  debtor  in  question  was 
164 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

a  sort  of  promoter  who  had  become  indebted 
for  a  suit  of  clothing.  The  repeated  presenta- 
tion of  the  account  by  the  tailor  had  brought 
no  payments  of  any  sort.  Finally  he  decided, 
as  distracted  creditors  frequently  do,  that 
"something  must  be  done."  He  so  informed 
the  promoter  and  concluded  this  emphatic 
declaration  with  the  heartfelt  question, "  Can't 
you  do  anything?"  The  promoter  was  not 
impressed.  In  fact,  he  was  rather  amused, 
and,  to  show  both  his  amusement  and  uncon- 
cern, replied,  "I  might  give  you  a  sight  draft 
on  the  Czar  of  Russia."  The  tailor,  through  a 
politic  desire  to  show  his  appreciation  of  his 
debtor's  humor  or  else  because  he  was  too 
much  discouraged  and  exasperated  to  care 
what  he  said,  replied  that  he  would  accept  a 
draft  on  the  Czar  rather  than  let  the  account 
remain  in  its  present  condition.  The  pro- 
moter, although  he  had  no  claims  upon  nor 
credit  or  acquaintance  with  the  Czar,  pro- 
ceeded to  prepare  a  draft  upon  the  "Little 
Father."  The  tailor,  feeling  perhaps  that  the 
debtor's  fantastic  act  constituted  at  least  an 

165 


SALESMANSHIP 

acknowledgment  of  the  debt,  took  the  draft 
and  went  on  his  way.  A  series  of  circumstances 
not  necessary  to  relate  here  resulted  in  the 
draft  being  deposited  in  the  tailor's  bank, 
whence  in  due  course  it  arrived  in  Russia.  The 
promoter  had  entirely  forgotten  the  incident, 
when  a  couple  of  months  later  he  received  a 
communication  from  a  bureau  head  at  St. 
Petersburg,  containing  the  information  that 
while  his  draft  had  in  that  instance  been  paid, 
he  must  in  the  future  refrain  from  making 
drafts  upon  the  Czar  personally,  and  must 
instead  make  requisition  on  the  writer  of  the 
letter,  such  requisition  to  be  accompanied  by 
a  full  explanation  of  the  services  covered.  This 
story  is  vouched  for  by  a  prominent  and,  I  be- 
lieve, truthful  member  of  the  Minnesota  Bar, 
who  had  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
drawer  of  the  draft. 

Perhaps  it  does  n't  much  matter  whether 
the  story  is  true.  If  it  is  true,  it  does  n't  prove 
anything,  unless  we  want  to  accept  the  theory 
that  Providence  is  on  the  side  of  the  creditor 
who  refuses  to  let  his  accounts  grow  stale. 
166 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

However,  I  believe  that  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant things  in  the  collection  business  is  to 
get  your  debtor  to  "do  something"  —  for,  if 
nothing  else  can  be  done,  it  is  important  to 
keep  him  alive  to  the  moral  obligation  that 
rests  upon  him.  This  phrase,  "do  something," 
appears  quite  frequently  in  dunning  letters, 
and  is  often  used  by  collectors  in  their  oral 
interviews  with  debtors.  It  is  a  good  underly- 
ing motive  for  a  collector  to  have,  but  it  should 
not  be  defined  in  such  general  terms.  The 
something  a  collector  wants  a  debtor  to  do 
should  be  definitely  in  the  collector's  mind  and 
approached  with  all  of  the  adroitness  at  the 
collector's  command. 

A  creditor  always  knows  what  he  most  de- 
sires a  debtor  to  do.  He  wants  the  debtor  to 
pay  in  full.  If  he  can't  have  his  first  wish,  he 
should  know  definitely  what  his  second  wish 
is  and  work  definitely  toward  its  accomplish- 
ment. A  substantial  part  payment  is  usually 
the  creditor's  second  choice.  Then  comes 
security  for  the  entire  debt.  And  finally,  if 
nothing  better  can  be  obtained,  and  the  credi- 
167 


SALESMANSHIP 

tor  does  not  care  to  invoke  the  aid  of  the 
courts,  an  unsecured  note  is  probably  the 
creditor's  best  remaining  alternative  —  and 
last,  but  not  entirely  to  be  despised,  just  a 
plain,  ordinary,  honest-to-goodness  promise 
to  pay  on  a  certain  date. 

A  plain  appeal  for  a  plain  but  definite 
promise  occasionally  has  gratifying  results. 
I  remember  that  one  December,  about  ten 
years  ago,  I  decided  to  send  a  New  Year's 
greeting  to  a  lot  of  debtors  whose  indebtedness 
we  intended  to  wipe  off  the  books  as  uncol- 
lectible at  the  then  fast  approaching  close  of 
our  fiscal  year.  The  letter  which  we  sent  was 
pronounced  by  my  superior  officer,  "About 
the  silliest  thing  I  ever  saw."  It  started  out 
with  a  more  or  less  poetic  reference  to  the 
dawn  of  the  new  year.  We  proceeded  on  the 
assumption  that  delinquent  debtors  are  par- 
ticularly conscious  of  their  indebtedness  on 
January  I,  although  I  do  not  believe  they  are, 
nor  that  the  emphasis  laid  on  this  point  had 
anything  to  do  with  the  success  of  our  letter, 
except  as  it  afforded  a  slightly  different  and 
168 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

decidedly  less  peremptory  introduction  than 
is  found  in  most  dunning  letters.  The  impor- 
tant money-getting  paragraph  in  this  letter 
proved  to  be  the  following:  — 

"From  what  we  believe  to  be  true  of  you 
as  a  man,  the  fact  that  you  have  not  paid  us 
can  mean  but  one  thing,  namely,  that  circum- 
stances over  which  you  have  had  no  control 
have  prevented  you  from  paying.  It  would  be 
an  impertinence  for  us  to  inquire  into  those 
circumstances.  They  are  a  part  of  your  own 
private  affairs.  All  that  we  ask  of  you  now  is 
that  you  tell  us  when  you  will  pay.  If  you 
name  a  date  when  you  will  pay,  we  know  you 
will  do  it.  Your  statement  of  the  exact  date 
upon  which  we  may  expect  payment  will  be 
helpful  to  us  because  we  have  the  same  prob- 
lems of  raising  money  that  you  have.  We  are 
a  large  concern,  to  be  sure,  but  for  the  same 
reason  that  a  farmer  keeps  no  more  horses 
in  his  stable  than  he  needs  to  plough  his 
corn,  we  keep  no  more  money  in  our  busi- 
ness than  we  actually  need.  Therefore  when 
you  write  us  when  you  will  pay,  a  little  cash 


SALESMANSHIP 

will  also  be  appreciated  if  you  can  spare  it 
now,  etc." 

You  can't  blame  the  man  who  called  this 
a  silly  letter,  yet  it  brought  several  hundred 
dollars  in  cash  and  promises  that  ultimately 
netted  several  thousand  dollars.  One  of  the 
latter  was  from  a  gentleman  who  had  been 
discharged  in  bankruptcy.  He  said:  "I  guess 
you  don't  know  I'm  an  adjudicated  bankrupt 
and  don't  owe  you  a  cent  under  the  law.  If 
you  did,  you  would  n't  write  me  that  way. 
I  don't  have  to  pay  you,  but  I  will  on  May 
I."  He  did.  Another  gentleman  from  the 
"  Blue  Grass,"  who  had  impoverished  himself 
through  his  fondness  for  race-horses,  wrote: 
"I've  never  welshed  yet.  I'll  send  you  the 
money  by  July  I."  He  sent  part  of  it  then 
and  the  rest  later.  Yes,  sir,  I'm  a  great  be- 
liever in  a  promise  that  names  a  definite 
date  of  payment,  no  matter  who  gives  the 
promise. 

If  I  could  announce  a  method  that  would 
unfailingly  extract  cash  or  security  from 
debtors,  —  good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  —  this 
170 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

would  be  a  very  valuable  article.  In  fact,  if 
I  had  any  such  method,  I  doubt  if  I  should  be 
generous  enough  to  disclose  it  here.  But  I  can 
give  you  some  of  my  theories  about  the  tech- 
nique of  collection-making.  You  must  take 
them  for  what  they  seem  to  you  to  be  worth. 
The  most  that  I  can  say  in  support  of  them  is 
that  I  have  practiced  these  theories  with  some 
success. 

When  a  collector  tackles  a  delinquent 
debtor  —  either  by  correspondence  or  in  per- 
son—  I  believe  he  should  proceed  on  the 
theory  that  he  has  something  to  sell  to  the 
debtor.  If  you  have  read  the  preceding  chap- 
ters you  already  know  that  I  regard  buying 
as  the  selling  of  dollars.  I  am  equally  con- 
vinced that  collecting,  when  truly  defined,  is 
simply  another  form  of  salesmanship. 

What  is  it  a  collector  can  sell  to  a  delinquent 
debtor?  Perhaps  the  answer  depends  to  some 
extent  on  the  kind  of  debtor.  I  don't  mean  by 
this  the  debtor's  character  or  temperament. 
I  have  encountered  a  good  many  different 
debtors  and  I  haven't  the  faintest  concep- 
171 


SALESMANSHIP 

tion  of  the  characters  of  any  of  them  —  not 
even  the  worst  deadbeat  among  them.  When 
I  say  the  answer  depends  on  the  kind  of  debtor, 
I  mean  that  it  depends  on  some  such  thing, 
for  example,  as  this:  whether  the  debtor  is 
execution-  and  garnishment-proof;  or  is  a  sol- 
vent farmer  who  has  stood  off  the  grocers  and 
implement  dealers  through  so  many  crop  fail- 
ures that  he  has  become  habitually  slow  in 
paying  his  debts;  or  is  a  person  who  imagines 
himself  so  rich  and  powerful  that  a  trades- 
man's unpaid  bill  has  no  significance  except 
that  the  debtor  has  n't  time  to  check  the  bill 
and  sign  a  check.  Those  are  a  few  of  the  sev- 
eral types  with  which  a  collector  may  have  to 
deal. 

Let  us  consider  the  execution-  and  garnish- 
ment-proof man.  "Bullet-proof"  and  "bomb- 
proof" are  phrases  that  are  frequently  applied 
to  him.  What  can  the  collector  sell  to  such  a 
debtor?  There  are  several  things,  but  all  of 
them  are  specialties,  and  the  collector  has  to 
work  up  their  sale  as  carefully  as  the  specialty 
salesman  develops  a  purchaser's  interest  in 
172 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

his  goods.  Some  of  the  things  that  can  be  sold 
to  a  bullet-proof  debtor  in  exchange  for  his 
reluctant  dollars  are  self-respect  and  vanity. 
I  have  encountered  a  good  many  debtors  who 
were  not  commonly  regarded  as  possessing 
much  self-respect,  but  in  most  cases  it  proved 
that  some  semblance  of  self-respect  could  be 
aroused  within  them.  A  collector  has  the  con- 
siderable advantage  over  a  salesman  that  he 
need  not  be  entirely  sincere,  while  a  salesman 
should  be  entirely  so.  If  a  collector's  approach 
to  a  debtor  is  marked  by  a  distinctly  cordial 
and  friendly  manner,  the  debtor  is  usually  dis- 
posed to  accept  the  collector's  deportment  as 
truly  indicative  of  his  state  of  mind.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  buyer  is  inclined  to  suspect  that 
excessive  courtesy,  or  more  than  ordinary 
geniality,  on  the  part  of  a  salesman  is  assumed 
for  the  occasion,  and  he  is  more  likely  to  be 
annoyed  than  impressed  favorably. 

Personally,  I  am  a  great  believer  in  giving 

a  debtor  a  hearty  handshake  when  I  introduce 

myself  to  him.   If  a  male  and  not  one  whose 

age  or  station  would  make  such  a  familiarity 

173 


SALESMANSHIP 

in  bad  taste,  I  like  to  use  the  old-time  exhort- 
er's  method  and  put  my  left  hand  on  the  debt- 
or's right  forearm  when  I  shake  hands  with 
him.  I  have  had  that  sort  of  thing  done  to  me, 
and  I  positively  loathe  it,  but  with  the  average 
debtor  it  seems  to  be  one  of  the  most  concili- 
atory and  confidence-inspiring  things  a  col- 
lector can  do. 

It  is  a  mistake  for  a  collector  to  hem  and 
haw  about  his  mission.  When  he  is  shaking 
hands  is  the  time  to  declare  it.  If  he  does  n't, 
the  handshaking  is  n't  much  good.  When  I 
was  actively  engaged  in  collection  work,  my 
favorite  —  and  most  successful  —  opening 
speech  was  this :  "I 'm  Maxwell  of  the  So-and- 
So  Company.  I  Ve  got  that  little  account  of 
yours  with  me.  Guess  you  overlooked  it  —  or 
something.  Anyway,  I  guess  you  don't  gen- 
erally let  an  account  get  in  the  past-due  file 
this  way." 

That  does  n't  sound  like  much,  but  it  rep- 
resents some  experience  and  a  good  deal  of 
study  on  my  part.  First  of  all,  it  is  man-to- 
man talk  without  any  frills  —  and,  by  the 
174 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

way,  "reckon"  should  replace  "guess"  when 
one  gets  south  of  the  Ohio  River.  In  the  sec- 
ond place,  this  greeting  contains  no  implica- 
tion of  reproach  or  lack  of  confidence,  but 
does  imply  that  you  have  a  good  opinion  of 
the  debtor  which  you  confidently  expect  he 
will  fully  justify.  In  the  third  place,  this 
kind  of  approach  puts  it  up  to  the  debtor  to 
explain  everything  to  you.  In  my  days  as  a 
collector,  no  debtor  whom  I  had  approached 
in  this  manner  ever  came  back  immediately 
with  a  flat  refusal  to  pay;  this  despite  the  fact 
that  I  have  worked  on  a  good  many  collec- 
tions where  breach  of  warranty  was  claimed 
or  some  other  disclaimer  of  indebtedness  was 
made. 

In  my  judgment  it  is  important  that  a  col- 
lector should  encourage  a  debtor  to  talk,  and 
that  the  debtor  should  divulge  his  entire  list 
of  excuses  —  or  grievances  —  before  the  col- 
lector commences  to  do  his  talking.  A  good 
collector  is  always  genuinely  sympathetic 
when  a  hard-luck  story  is  told.  He  can  be  that 
without  being  any  less  resolute  in  his  deter- 
175 


SALESMANSHIP 

mination  to  get  an  immediate  cash  settlement. 
Likewise,  if  the  debtor  disclaims  indebted- 
ness, the  collector  should  be  capable  of  listen- 
ing patiently  and  attentively  to  the  debtor's 
attempted  justification. 

I  remember  that4  a  good  many  years  ago  I 
was  in  a  little  town  in  southern  Illinois,  col- 
lecting for  a  harvester  company.  For  several 
days  I  had  been  driving  out  among  the 
farmers.  Finally  I  cleaned  up  the  county  ex- 
cept for  one  dilapidated  old  note  which  had 
reposed  for  several  years  in  the  collection  files 
of  the  local  attorney.  One  rainy  Saturday 
afternoon  I  asked  for  the  note.  The  lawyer 
laughed  at  me.  "Nobody  can  collect  that 
note.  I  Ve  tried  it,  and  three  or  four  collectors 
before  you  have  tried.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  fellow  does  n't  owe  it.  You  people  took  the 
binder  away  from  him  over  in  Indiana  with- 
out due  process  of  law,  sold  it  for  $12,  and  now 
you're  trying  to  collect  the  balance.  This  fel- 
low is  a  jackleg  carpenter  around  town  here. 
He  just  makes  enough  to  live  on,  and  he 
could  n't  pay  if  he  wanted  to  —  which  you 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

can  rest  assured  he  does  n't  want  to  do. 
Furthermore  his  wife  is  a  virago  and  is  liable 
to  throw  boiling  water  on  you  if  you  go  down 
there." 

While  this  was  not  an  alluring  collection, 
it  was  in  the  line  of  duty.  I  found  the  man 
in  his  henhouse,  where  he  was  repairing  the 
roosts.  He  was  not  anxious  to  talk  about  his 
indebtedness,  but  appeared  quite  ready  to  quit 
work.  The  silencing  of  his  hammer  strokes 
soon  brought  his  wife  upon  the  scene.  She 
proved  to  be  all  the  lawyer  had  said  about 
her.  She  called  my  company  and  me  all  of  the 
names  that  a  chaste  woman  could  well  include 
within  the  limits  of  her  vocabulary.  I  am  not 
certain  that  she  did  not  exceed  such  limita- 
tions. With  hat  in  hand  I  listened  fearfully 
but,  fortunately,  with  a  most  respectful  man- 
ner. At  the  conclusion  of  her  tirade,  with- 
drawing a  threatening  and  formidable  fist 
from  the  near  proximity  of  my  nose,  she  re- 
marked with  a  sigh  of  relief:  "You  are  the 
only  one  who  would  listen  to  me  until  I  got 
through.  Now  you  know  what  I  think  of  you. 
177 


SALESMANSHIP 

We've  got  eighty  dollars  in  the  house.  If  you 
want  that,  you  can  have  it,  just  because 
you're  the  first  one  that's  ever  come  around 
here  and  treated  us  like  we  was  white  folks." 
Thus,  practically  without  saying  a  word,  I 
made  a  comparatively  good-sized  collection  on 
a  tolerably  worthless  claim  —  so  worthless,  in 
fact,  that  the  local  lawyer  disbelieved  my  as- 
sertion that  I  had  collected  eighty  dollars  on 
it,  and  neglected  to  claim  his  commission. 

When  a  debtor  has  had  his  say  is  time 
enough  for  the  collector  to  start  in.  A  pretty 
good  way  for  a  collector  to  commence  when 
he  has  heard  the  debtor's  story  is  to  say:  "I 
knew  there  was  something  like  that  or  you 
would  n't  have  let  this  thing  run  the  way  it 
has."  This  satisfies  the  debtor  that  his  state- 
ments have  been  taken  at  their  face  value. 
He  has  had  his  say  and  relieved  his  mind.  He 
is  hardly  in  a  position  to  turn  an  unheeding 
ear  to  the  collector's  remarks. 

Suppose  a  debtor  claims  he  does  n't  owe  the 
debt.  After  the  collector  has  heard  the  debt- 
or's statement,  it  is  up  to  him  to  say  in  effect: 
178 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

"I  know  exactly  how  you  feel  about  this.  You 
want  to  be  fair  and  square,  and  so  do  we.  The 
trouble  with  both  of  us  is  that  neither  of  us 
can  look  at  this  proposition  the  way  a  third 
party  would,  and  the  trouble  with  third 
parties  is  that  when  you  get  twelve  of  them 
in  the  jury  box  and  another  up  on  the  judge's 
bench,  it  costs  both  sides  a  lot  of  money  to 
find  out  what  disinterested  third  parties  are 
going  to  think  after  all  of  the  facts  and  law  are 
brought  out  by  a  gang  of  high-priced  lawyers. 
Then,  if  the  fellow  who  loses  the  suit  is  dis- 
satisfied and  wants  the  higher  courts  to  pass 
on  the  case,  there  is  a  lot  more  expense,  not 
counting  the  time  and  worry  and  bother.  You 
can  get  plenty  of  good  lawyers  who  will  advise 
you  that  you  can  beat  us  in  a  suit.  We  can 
probably  get  just  as  many  who  will  advise  us 
that  we  can  beat  you.  They  will  all  be  honest 
about  it,  too,  but  in  the  wind-up  you  and  my 
house  will  have  some  good  big  bills  to  pay, 
no  matter  which  way  the  case  goes.  If  there 
was  n't  anything  involved  but  dollars  and 
cents,  my  house  would  a  good  deal  rather  com- 
179 


SALESMANSHIP 

promise  with  you  than  bring  a  suit.  They 
know  there 's  no  money  in  lawsuits.  So  do  you 
and  so  do  I;  but  here's  the  point:  My  house 
can't  afford  to  lie  down  on  a  proposition  like 
this.  If  they  did,  it  would  be  talked  about  all 
over  the  country  in  no  time,  and,  as  you  can 
readily  appreciate,  it  is  better  for  them  to 
carry  a  case  to  the  Supreme  Court  —  even  if 
they  finally  lose  it  —  than  for  them  to  lie 
down.  You  know  what  I  mean.  Now,  what 
do  you  say  to  this:  Before  either  of  us  starts 
in  to  buy  law,  suppose  you  and  I  try  to  forget 
that  we  are  interested  in  this  case,  and  see  if 
we  can't  look  at  it  just  as  if  we  were  a  couple 
of  jurymen.  We  won't  argue  with  each  other, 
but  we'll  take  up  each  point  and  discuss  it 
from  both  sides,  and  try  to  make  up  our 
minds  how  a  jury  or  the  Supreme  Court 
would  look  at  the  case.  What  do  you  say?" 

With  variations  I  have  used  this  line  of 
argument  in  the  attempted  adjustment  of  a 
good  many  disputed  claims.  I  have  n't  always 
succeeded  in  getting  the  desired  adjustment, 
but  I  have  never  failed  to  get  a  disputatious 
1 80 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

debtor  to  open  his  mind  to  an  unheated  and 
fairly  intelligent  consideration  of  my  side  of 
the  case.  What  is  it  that  the  collector  sells 
to  the  debtor  in  this  instance?  Partly  self- 
respect,  partly  vanity,  and  partly  something 
else.  Self-respect,  because  no  self-respecting 
debtor  can  preserve  his  dignity  and  decline  a 
courteous  and  tactful  challenge  to  put  his 
cards  on  the  table.  Vanity,  because  you  give 
him  credit  for  being  a  fair-minded  man  and 
ascribe  to  him  all  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
courts  and  litigation  that  you  yourself  possess. 
To  justify  your  opinion  of  him  he  is  virtually 
obliged  to  join  you  in  your  proposed  judicial 
consideration  of  the  disputed  debt.  As  to  the 
other  things  you  try  to  sell  him,  one  is  the 
conviction  that  he  is  in  for  a  lawsuit  if  an 
amicable  settlement  cannot  be  effected.  You 
don't  threaten  a  suit;  you  merely  treat  it  as 
an  inevitable,  regrettable,  and  unprofitable 
necessity  unless  you  and  he  can  avert  it  by 
making  a  friendly  adjustment.  Few  men  en- 
joy lawsuits,  and  if  you  deprive  the  average 
man  of  all  excuse  for  a  heated  discussion  of  his 
181 


SALESMANSHIP 

case  or  emphatic  prophecy  as  to  its  result,  his 
enthusiasm  for  litigation  is  likely  to  depart  as 
rapidly  as  the  joyousness  of  a  belated  reveler 
when  overtaken  by  a  chill  November  dawn. 

Now  let  us  come  back  to  the  man  who 
alleges  no  defense,  but  has  a  great  many  ex- 
cuses —  the  hard-luck  man.  You  tell  him  you 
know  he  wants  to  pay  and  intends  to  pay. 
You  did  n't  understand  why  he  had  n't  paid 
until  he  told  you  why.  Now  you  know;  his 
excuses  are  perfectly  good;  no  apologies  are 
necessary;  you  will  explain  it  to  the  house  so 
they  will  understand  it  as  well  as  you  do. 
Everything  is  all  right  up  to  date,  but  now  a 
time  has  come  ;yhen  the  house  is  asking  for 
money  and  is  depending  on  you  to  get  it  for 
them.  What  excuse  can  you  offer  for  not  col- 
lecting this  account?  None  whatever.  If  you 
can't  collect  this  account,  you've  got  to  admit 
that  you're  a  mighty  poor  collector.  Here's 
an  account  that  is  absolutely  good.  Anybody 
would  be  glad  to  have  it  in  their  books.  How 
can  you  go  back  to  your  house  and  admit  that 
you  couldn  't  collect  it?  That  the  man  has  n't 
182 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

got  the  money  won't  go  as  an  excuse  —  not 
unless  he  is  the  kind  of  man  who  does  n't 
stand  well  enough  among  moneyed  people  to 
raise  a  few  dollars  when  he  runs  a  little  short. 
"Listen,  Mr.  Debtor,  you  know  there  is  no 
excuse  I  can  give  them  for  not  collecting  from 
you." 

It  is  probably  unnecessary  to  continue  thia 
hypothetical  conversation.  It  is  enough  if  I 
have  made  clear  what  I  mean  when  I  express 
the  opinion  that  a  collector  should  try  to  sell 
self-respect  and  vanity  to  a  debtor. 

Once  I  had  a  traveling  collector  down  South 
who  couldn't  collect  from  negroes.  I  had 
written  him  how  to  do  it.  Finally  he  wrote 
me,  "Maybe  you  can,  but  I  can't."  That 
"  maybe"  got  under  my  skin,  and  I  got  on  the 
train.  When  I  joined  out  with  him,  as  they 
say  in  the  circus  business,  he  had  a  case  ready 
for  me.  It  was  a  debt  against  a  black  man, 
named  Sam  Jackson,  described  by  local  au- 
thorities as  "the  most  no-'count  nigger  in  this 
State.  He  married  a  yellow  gal  that  used  to 
Work  for  the  Carters.  They  got  a  little  place 
183 


SALESMANSHIP 

worth  about  eight  hundred  dollars,  but  she 
won't  sign  a  mortgage." 

We  went  out  to  see  Sam  and  found  him  work- 
ing for  wages  —  far  below  the  wage  exemp- 
tion. "Yessuh,  I'd  pay  if  I  could,  but  I  just 
naturally  kaint.  Security?  How  I  gwine  give 
security?  My  wife?  Yessuh,  I  'm  just  the  kind 
of  a  man  you-all  gemmen  says  I  is.  Yessuh, 
I  aims  to  pay,  and  if  you  kin  git  Lucella  to 
sign  a  mortgage,  Pse  perfectly  willin',  yes- 
suh." 

We  returned  to  town  and  hired  a  handsome 
surrey  and  two  handsome  gray  horses.  We 
did  not  take  a  negro  driver.  Alone  we  drove 
to  see  Lucella.  Flattered  she  undoubtedly 
was,  although  scarcely  enthusiastic  about  giv- 
ing a  mortgage  on  their  little  farm.  The  pleas- 
urable experience  of  driving  back  to  town  on 
the  rear  seat  of  a  surrey  with  two  "white 
gemmen"  in  the  front  seat  finally  overcame 
her  reluctance  to  come  face  to  face  with  the 
mortgage  question.  We  picked  up  her  hus- 
band and  started  back  to  the  courthouse, 
meanwhile  asserting  and  reasserting  our  con- 
184 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

viction  that  within  her  heart  dwelt  that  fine 
sense  of  the  obligation  of  a  debt  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  high-class  colored  person  from 
the  ordinary  negro.  Unhappily,  however,  our 
ignorance  of  local  geography  permitted  us  to 
drive  past  the  Carter  mansion,  and  Lucella 
insisted  upon  alighting  and  consulting  Miss 
Hallie.  With  heavy  hearts  we  continued  with 
Sam.  We  prepared  the  mortgage  and  awaited 
Lucella's  arrival.  At  length  she  came,  dis- 
tinctly defiant.  "Miss  Hallie  says  I  ain't  got 
no  call  to  sign  no  mortgage." 

"Dats  allus  the  way  with  a  woman,"  Sam 
sagely  remarked. 

He  thereby  gave  us  our  cue.  "Lucella,  have 
you  less  pride  than  Sam?  You've  been  raised 
as  well  as  he  has,  have  n't  you?" 

I  placed  a  pen  in  her  unwilling  hands. 

"No,  suh,  I  just  ain't  going — " 

"I  knew  you  would,  Mrs.  Jackson.  You 
sign  right  on  that  line  there." 

She  signed,  and  the  court  official  cynically 
took  her  acknowledgment  of  her  act  and  sub- 
sequently remarked,  "I'm  mighty  glad  some- 
i*S 


SALESMANSHIP 

body  can  make  those  two  niggers  do  some- 
thing." 

Instead  of  inspiring  my  collector,  I  caused 
him  to  resign,  for  he  said  that  he  would  never 
call  a  negro  woman  "Mrs."  Personally  I  don't 
think  it  was  the  "Mrs."  alone  that  induced 
Lucella  to  sign  the  mortgage,  although  the  use 
of  that  word  no  doubt  had  a  part  in  the  final 
result.  I  tell  the  story  because  I  think  it  il- 
lustrates how  vanity  can  be  sold  to  a  debtor. 
Perhaps  it  will  interest  you  to  know  that  we 
permitted  Sam  to  pay  the  debt  as  he  found 
it  convenient  and  that  Lucella  probably  still 
lives  in  the  same  little  mud-chinked  log  cabin. 

Farmers  frequently  present  a  great  collec- 
tion problem;  not  because  farmers  don't  pay 
their  debts,  but  because  they  don't  always 
pay  as  promptly  as  manufacturers  and  jobbers 
expect  a  country  merchant  to  pay  for  the  goods 
he  has  sold  to  the  farmers.  If  I  were  a  country 
merchant,  had  a  lot  of  good  but  slow  farmers 
on  my  books,  and  needed  money  to  pay  the 
jobbers  and  manufacturers  with  whom  I  dealt, 
I  should  state  the  case  to  my  farmer  cus- 
1 86 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

tomers  very  frankly.  As  a  starter  I  think  I 
should  tell  them  or  write  them  something  like 
this:  — 

"  The  manufacturers  and  jobbers  from 
whom  I  buy  goods  like  to  have  me  pay  them 
promptly,  and  I  generally  manage  to  do  so. 
You  know  that  I  handle  first-class  goods  and 
that  I  try  to  keep  my  selling  prices  as  low  as 
possible.  The  values  and  the  service  that  the 
merchants  in  this  town  can  give  to  their  cus- 
tomers depend  to  some  extent  on  their  stand- 
ing with  their  jobbers  and  factories.  Prompt 
pay  is  the  best  standing  a  merchant  can  have, 
and  that  is  the  standing  I  try  to  maintain. 

"You  are  my  customer.  I  value  your  pat- 
ronage. I  want  to  keep  it,  and  I  know  that 
I  can  keep  it  as  long  as  I  give  you  the  right 
goods  and  the  right  service  at  the  right  prices. 
I  have  written  this  letter  because  I  am  send- 
ing you  a  statement  of  your  account.  I  want 
you  to  understand,  however,  that  this  is  not  a 
dunning  letter.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  feel 
like  helping  me  out,  I  can  assure  you  that  the 
money  will  come  in  handy ." 
187 


SALESMANSHIP 

I  know  a  good  many  farmers  and  I  know  a 
good  deal  about  them.  They  are  pretty  good 
fellows,  and  while  they  frequently  seem  a 
trifle  indifferent  in  regard  to  their  notes  and 
accounts  payable,  I  have  never  known  them 
to  refuse  to  help  a  neighbor  when  he  needed 
help,  nor  have  I  ever  known  them  to  refuse 
to  help  a  good  merchant  when  he  needed  help 
—  provided  he  asked  for  it  in  the  right  way. 

If  I  had  a  lot  of  fashionable  millionaire 
delinquents,  as  many  city  merchants  do,  I 
should  handle  the  collection  of  their  accounts 
a  good  deal  as  if  they  were  farmers.  In  both 
cases  I  should  try  to  sell  the  sense  of  gratifica- 
tion that  any  one,  whether  farmer  or  million- 
aire, is  likely  to  feel  in  bestowing  a  favor  and 
at  the  same  time  discharging  a  debt  that  in 
any  case  would  have  to  be  paid  some  time. 

Collection-making  is  probably  the  most  hu- 
man phase  of  business  and  the  simplest  and 
the  easiest.  Deadbeats  there  are  and  always 
will  be,  but  it  is  surprising  how  many  dead- 
beats  will  pay  if  their  indebtedness  can  be  pre- 
sented to  them  in  the  right  light.  I  know  a 
188 


GETTING  YOUR  MONEY 

man  who  rarely  pays  a  legitimate  bill,  but  is 
scrupulously  prompt  in  paying  bets.  It  should 
be  possible  to  raise  some  of  his  legitimate  obli- 
gations to  the  dignity  and  importance  in  his 
eyes  of  one  of  his  gambling  debts.  The  trouble 
is,  however,  that  ordinary  collection  methods 
do  not  suffice  in  his  case.  The  usual  progres- 
sion from  the  perfunctory  mailing  and  pres- 
entation of  an  account  to  the  ultimate  threat- 
ening demand  for  its  payment  embraces  no 
collection  method  that  has  the  slightest  effect 
upon  him.  Yet  I  believe  he  would  not  be 
a  difficult  man  to  collect  from  if  properly 
handled. 

The  collector  should  assume,  or  at  least  pre- 
tend to  assume,  that  every  debtor  wants  to 
pay  and  intends  to  pay.  The  debtor's  past  de- 
linquencies should  not  be  held  against  him; 
he  should  rarely  be  reproached  with  them,  for, 
however  satisfying  this  may  be  to  the  collector, 
it  gives  the  debtor  a  chance  to  say,  "If  I  have 
the  name,  I  might  as  well  have  the  game." 

When  a  cash  settlement  can't  be  obtained, 
a  secured  note  is  usually  the  next  best  thing.  It 
189 


SALESMANSHIP 

has  been  my  experience  that  the  easiest  way 
to  get  security  is  to  press  for  cash  long  after 
you  have  given  up  all  hope  of  getting  it,  and 
then,  as  a  possible  alternative  and  in  the  guise 
of  a  concession  to  the  debtor,  bring  up  the 
question  of  security.  Here  again  vanity  can 
sometimes  be  sold,  for  the  ability  to  get  a  sol- 
vent surety  to  sign  one's  note  is  a  sort  of  proof 
of  one's  financial  standing.  Failing  either  cash 
or  security,  a  definite  calendar  date  promise  of 
payment,  partial  or  entire,  is  the  least  a  col- 
lector should  content  himself  with,  for  one  of 
the  most  important  things  in  the  collection 
business  is  to  keep  a  debtor  doing  something 
even  if  it  is  no  more  than  promising. 


VII 

CREDIT-MAKING 

"How  droll!"  the  young  matron  remarked 
as  she  finished  reading  a  printed  form  letter 
which  her  husband  handed  her  one  evening. 

The  form  letter  had  been  addressed  to  the  hus- 
band athis  place  of  business  and  ran  as  follows : 

With  reference  to  your  application  for 
credit  with  us,  let  us  say  that  we  have  availed 
ourselves  of  your  references  and  will  accom- 
modate you  with  credit  up  to  $100  [the  amount 
inserted  in  typewriting]  in  conformity  with 
our  usual  terms,  which  are,  that  a  statement 
will  be  rendered  on  the  first  of  each  month  for 
all  purchases  of  the  previous  month  and  settle- 
ment must  be  made  before  the  tenth  of  the 
month  following  the  month  in  which  the  pur- 
chases were  made. 

Trusting  that  this  will  be  satisfactory,  we 
are, 

Yours  truly. 
191 


SALESMANSHIP 

The  young  matron  explained:  "You  see  it 
was  like  this.  I  had  intended  to  have  Measure 
and  Cuttem  make  my  spring  suit,  but  I  hap- 
pened to  be  in  Readymade's  suit  department 
the  other  day  and  they  had  a  blue  serge  that 
nearly  fitted  me.  I  had  no  money  in  my  purse 
and  the  saleswoman  urged  me  to  open  an  ac- 
count with  the  store.  I  did  n't  suppose  they 
thought  they  were  'accommodating'  me  or 
that  they  were  going  to  write  you  about  it. 
I  thought  I  was  'accommodating'  them  by 
opening  an  account." 

Credit  departments  of  retail  stores  are  not 
always  quite  so  undiplomatic  or  ungracious, 
nor  are  young  matrons  always  quite  so  igno- 
rant of  the  functions  and  methods  of  a  credit 
man,  but  credit-making  is  droll  —  very  droll 
—  just  as  the  young  woman  said,  and  the 
average  shopper  has  but  a  very  vague  idea  of 
what  a  credit  man  is  supposed  to  do. 

Credit  men  can  be  divided  into  two  princi- 
pal classes:  gamblers  and  grouches.  Outside 
of  these  two  general  classifications  are  quite 
a  number  of  other  credit  men,  to  be  sure,  but 
192 


CREDIT-MAKING 

it  would  take  a  long  time  to  classify  all  of 
them,  for  nearly  every  one  of  them  deserves  a 
classification  all  by  himself  —  such  are  the 
subtitles  of  credit-making  when  one  decides 
to  be  neither  a  gambler  nor  a  grouch  credit 
man. 

Gambling  credit  men  are  common.  To  be 
one  is  as  simple  as  to  be  the  croupier  at  a  gam- 
ing-table. There  is  nearly  always  a  percentage 
in  favor  of  the  house,  whether  it  be  gaming- 
house or  merchandising  establishment.  The 
gambling  credit  man  has  his  own  estimate  of 
the  percentage  against  the  buyer  and  makes 
his  credits  accordingly.  Playing  on  a  wide 
margin  of  profit  and  supported  by  a  corps  of 
efficient  collectors, he  will  last  a  longtime;  I 
know  some  who  have  lasted  for  years  and  kick 
in  under  the  table  at  every  Credit  Men's  As- 
sociation banquet  and  look  as  wise  as  anybody, 
while  a  Congressman  from  out  West,  who  was 
formerly  a  notary  public  and  attorney-at-law 
at  Broken  Bow  or  Wounded  Knee,  holds  forth 
on  the  iniquity  of  Wall  Street  and  the  true 
inwardness  of  credits  —  the  former  represent- 
193 


SALESMANSHIP 

ing  a  bucket-shop  trade  that  went  wrong  and 
the  latter  a  flier  in  second  mortgages  on  west- 
ern Kansas  farm  lands  just  before  the  last 
panic. 

A  gambling  credit  man,  whether  wholesale 
or  retail,  if  true  to  type,  is  always  ready  to 
take  a  chance,  but  he  does  n't  like  to  play  with 
marked  cards  unless  marked  by  himself.  His 
investigations  about  a  prospective  customer 
call  for  about  the  same  information  that  a 
prudent  card-player  would  like  to  have  about 
his  opponents  in  a  Pullman  car  poker  game. 
An  even  break  is  all  that  a  gambling  credit 
man  wants  —  an  even  break  plus  the  percent- 
age of  profit  that  his  house  has  included  in  the 
selling  price.  If  an  applicant  for  credit  is  a 
notorious  deadbeat,  the  gambling  credit  man 
wants  to  know  it,  just  as  a  poker-player  would 
like  to  know  whether  his  opponents  are  pro- 
fessional card  sharps  —  but  outside  of  that, 
almost  anything  goes. 

The  gambling  credit  man  acquires  a  sort  of 
sixth  sense  that  is  not  so  very  different  from 
the  intuition  of  the  gambler,  commonly  called 
194 


CREDIT-MAKING 

"wiseness."  He  turns  down  a  credit  risk  oc- 
casionally for  no  better  defined  reason  than 
sometimes  prompts  a  gambler  to  "lay  off "  a 
poker  game  when  both  habit  and  inclination 
urge  participation. 

I  don't  know  of  any  particular  reason  why  we 
should  talk  very  much  about  gambling  credit 
men.  If  you  are  a  deadbeat,  there  is  always 
a  chance  that  you  can  put  one  over  on  that 
kind  of  credit  man.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
is  always  the  chance  that  he'll  stab  you  with 
his  little  old  C.O.D.  stamp.  You  never  can 
tell.  And,  oh,  before  I  forget,  let  me  warn  you, 
dear  Deadbeat,  that  a  free-and-easy,  take-a- 
chance  credit  man  is  usually  a  mighty  tight 
collector.  Usually  he  will  take  as  many 
chances  getting  his  money  from  you  as  he  did 
in  giving  credit  to  you.  Sometimes  his  con- 
fidence in  his  collection  methods  is  what 
makes  him  so  free  and  easy  in  his  credit 
methods.  Therefore,  Mr.  Deadbeat,  unless 
you  are  bulletproof  and  shame-proof,  be 
wary  of  the  gambling  credit  man. 

So  much  for  the  gambling  credit  manager. 
195 


SALESMANSHIP 

Now  about  the  grouch  credit  man  —  "grooly 
grouch"  as  the  little  boys  and  girls  say.  He 
can  be  one  of  two  kinds.  There  are  more  than 
two  kinds,  but  there  are  particularly  two 
kinds.  First,  there  is  the  frock-coated,  white- 
waistcoated,  clammy-handed  credit  man  who 
has  several  building  and  loan  books  and  a 
good  pew  at  church,  and  at  one  time  wrapped 
bundles  in  the  "retail"  or  picked  orders  in  the 
"wholesale."  He'd  rather  save  his  company 
—  "my  employers"  —  a  dollar  than  make 
them  ten  dollars.  He  is  the  sort  of  man  who 
will  stand  in  the  cloak  room  at  a  credit  men's 
dinner  and  tell  the  collection  manager  of  an 
installment  diamond  house  that  his  credit 
losses  during  the  preceding  year  were  only  one 
nineteenth  of  one  per  cent.  That's  one  kind 
of  a  grouch  credit  man.  Really  he  is  n't  a 
grouch  at  all.  He's  never  spent  much  money 
himself,  —  probably  does  n't  even  have  a 
charge  account  at  his  own  store,  —  and  is 
naturally  suspicious  of  any  one  who  wants  to 
buy  anything  on  credit,  but  he's  a  pretty  de- 
cent old  fellow,  at  that.  You  know  that  kind 
196 


CREDIT-MAKING 

of  man  is  always  old,  no  matter  what  his  age 
in  years  and  months  and  days  may  be.  He's 
old,  that's  all,  but  he's  a  pretty  good  chap  and 
the  world  would  be  better  if  about  ninety  per 
cent  of  all  of  us  were  like  him.  He  hates  to 
make  a  credit,  and,  if  he  dared  to  express  his 
own  convictions,  would  probably  advise  every- 
body to  pay  cash  for  everything.  However, 
he's  the  easiest  collector  in  the  world  when 
sickness  and  misfortune  overtake  his  debtors; 
but  Mr.  Deadbeat,  your  interest  in  him  is 
purely  academic,  for  such  as  you  rarely  put 
anything  over  on  that  sort  of  credit  man. 

The  other  kind  of  grouch  credit  man?  He 
is  a  burly  chap  —  burly  of  mind  if  not  of 
build.  Privately  he  may  be  a  charming  sort 
of  fellow.  Usually  he  is,  for  almost  every  man 
is  charming  when  you  really  get  to  know  him; 
nature  has  few  moulds  from  which  something 
worth  while  cannot  be  fashioned.  The  burly 
credit  man  does  n't  usually  know  very  much 
about  credits,  but  that  is  n't  exactly  a  distin- 
guishing mark,  for  scarcely  any  one  knows 
much  about  credits.  He  likes  to  say  to  a  sup- 
197 


SALESMANSHIP 

plicating  salesman  or  sales  manager  in  a  very 
gruff  voice,  "Nothing  doing  —  absolutely 
nothing  doing."  There  is  a  pleasure  to  him  in 
saying  that  gruffly.  The  gruff  part  is  particu- 
larly pleasurable.  He  is  nearly  always  in  the 
employ  of  a  manufacturer  or  jobber,  for  his 
kind  does  n't  thrive  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  re- 
tail store.  This  kind  of  credit  man  is  usually 
the  kind  that  can  be  placated,  and  therein  lies 
his  greatest  weakness.  He  is  particularly  sus- 
ceptible to  acquaintance,  for  no  one  can  be  a 
grouch  with  everybody  —  the  line  has  to  be 
drawn  somewhere.  When  he  gets  acquainted 
with  a  customer,  he  is  inclined  to  extend 
credit  on  the  strength  of  his  acquaintance,  and 
unfortunately  his  acquaintances  are  more 
likely  to  develop  along  social  than  financial 
lines.  At  creditors'  meetings  this  kind  of 
credit  man  is  frequently  to  be  seen  chewing 
bitterly  on  the  end  of  a  cigar  and  confiding  to 
all  who  will  listen,  "I  can't  understand  it. 
I  Ve  known  John  for  years  —  known  him  inti- 
mately. I  can't  understand  it  —  no,  sir,  I 
can't  understand  it." 

198 


CREDIT-MAKING 

Acquaintance  is  a  quicksand  of  credit.  Real 
acquaintance  would  be  an  aid,  but  the  kind  of 
acquaintance  with  our  customers  that  most 
of  us  acquire,  when  the  customers  visit  New 
York  or  Boston  or  Chicago,  or  wherever  it 
may  be,  is  n't  exactly  the  sort  of  acquaintance 
that  helps  us  in  making  credits.  We  may  be- 
come acquainted  with  the  fact  that  a  customer 
prefers  thick  soup  to  clear,  filet  mignon  to 
fowl,  and  Eva  Tanguay  to  Maude  Adams, 
without  really  finding  out  very  much  about 
him.  When  we  commence  to  count  him  our 
friend,  we  are  more  apt  to  inquire  whether  the 
September  Morn  cocktail  and  the  Hesitation 
Waltz  have  struck  his  town  yet  than  to  try  to 
check  up  his  accounts  and  bills  payable  and 
receivable,  stock  on  hand  and  cash  in  bank 
against  his  annual  turnover,  and  compare  the 
result  with  ditto  of  last  year. 

Being  a  "chilly  proposition"  or  a  grouch 
does  n't  help  a  credit  man  very  much  in  the 
long  run,  for  there  is  no  ice  so  cold  that  it  can't 
be  melted  and  no  grouch  so  deep  that  it 
can't  be  penetrated.  Fear,  however,  is  another 
199 


SALESMANSHIP 

matter — quite.  The  credit  man  who  is  afraid 
of  losing  his  employer's  dollars,  and  grows  irri- 
table over  it,  acquires  a  grouch  sometimes  that 
is  mighty  hard  to  dissipate.  That  kind  of 
grouch  credit  man  will  ordinarily  watch  a 
risky  credit  more  consistently  and  constantly 
than  the  burly,  bellowing  kind  of  credit  man. 
An  ex-burglar  acquaintance  of  mine  says,  "A 
bulldog  is  the  biggest  sucker  in  the  world  if 
you  know  how  to  handle  him,  but  look  out 
for  them  cowardly  collies."  There  are  bulldog 
credit  men  and  collie  credit  men.  Of  the  two, 
the  latter  are  probably  the  more  likely  to  nose 
out  a  customer's  failing  financial  condition  in 
time  to  prevent  a  loss,  but  neither  is  exactly 
the  ideal  type  of  credit-maker. 

We  have  now  considered  three  common 
kinds  of  credit  men.  Of  course,  no  credit  man 
is  consciously  anything  like  any  of  these  three 
kinds  and  you  could  n't  expect  him  to  admit 
that  he  is ;  but  who  of  us  are  able  to  see  our- 
selves as  others  see  us?  Surely  not  I.  Which 
brings  me  to  my  own  personal  ideas  of  credit- 
making.  I  have  some  of  the  best  ideas  about 
200 


CREDIT-MAKING 

credits,  but  at  the  same  time  am  one  of  the 
worst  credit  men  you  ever  saw.  Just  a  mo- 
ment ago  I  was  comparing  two  bank  state- 
ments. You  know  what  I  mean :  those  neatly 
printed  statements  of  assets  and  liabilities 
that  tell  you  everything  —  and  nothing.  By 
my  rules  of  financial  analysis  one  of  these 
banks,  according  to  its  statement,  figures 
about  ten  per  cent  stronger  than  the  other, 
but  my  conviction  is  that  the  bank  which  fig- 
ures the  weaker  of  the  two  is  in  reality  the 
stronger.  Why?  Chiefly  because  it  is  the  older 
and  larger  and  has  a  widespread  reputation  for 
stability.  Although  it  has  a  greater  proportion 
of  wild-cat  assets  and  has  gone  to  greater 
lengths  to  boost  the  size  of  its  surplus,  I  am 
willing  to  fall  in  line  with  the  mob  and  say, 
"That's  the  bank  for  me." 

This  typifies  a  difficulty  that  so-called  sci- 
entific credit  men  frequently  experience.  If 
you  are  a  scientific  credit  man,  your  system 
may  figure  out  one  result  while  your  natural 
inclination  is  to  do  the  exact  opposite,  be- 
cause every  one  else  seems  to  be  doing  it. 
201 


SALESMANSHIP 

Herein  is  a  double-barreled  credit  truth.  One 
barrel  shoots  forth  this  practical  fact:  the  in- 
dividual or  business  house  that  is  old  enough 
or  big  enough  or  throws  a  sufficient  bluff  to 
obtain  a  popular  acclaim  of  credit  worthiness, 
is  not  only  likely  to  get  a  lot  of  credit,  but  is 
also  almost  sure  to  get  a  lot  of  assistance  in 
troublous  financial  times.  From  the  practical 
credit  man's  standpoint  it  is  fairly  safe  "to 
string  along  with  the  bunch,"  for  if  the 
"bunch"  happen  to  be  wrong,  they  are  going 
to  be  mighty  slow  to  admit  it  and  will  ordi- 
narily do  almost  anything  to  prevent  the  ob- 
ject of  their  misplaced  confidence  from  blow- 
ing up  and  disclosing  the  full  extent  of  their 
indiscretion.  When  the  entire  "bunch"  is 
fooled,  you  seldom  hear  of  a  quick  "blow 
off."  There  are  sure  to  be  a  lot  of  creditors' 
meetings,  reorganization  plans,  retrenchment 
schemes,  and  that  sort  of  thing  before  any 
legal  notices  are  pasted  on  the  front  door. 
And,  ordinarily,  the  "bunch"  are  able  to  pull 
a  popular  debtor  through. 
The  other  barrel  of  this  credit  truth  con- 
202 


CREDIT-MAKING 

tains  a  charge  —  or  suggestion  —  to  credit- 
seekers.  If,  in  a  majority  of  cases,  the  credit- 
giver,  for  the  reasons  aforesaid,  feels  a  certain 
security  in  extending  credit  to  the  credit- 
seeker,  who  has  already  received  credit  in 
consequential  amounts  from  a  considerable 
number  of  other  credit-givers,  then,  surely, 
considering  future  possibilities  of  financial 
stress,  —  as  well  as  present  facility  in  obtain- 
ing credit,  —  it  profits  the  credit-seeker  to  es- 
tablish an  extended  line  of  credit  with  several 
credit  men  in  order  that  each  may  influence 
the  others  in  the  continuance  of  credit  favors, 
and  all  combine  to  save  the  credit-seeker — 
and  themselves  —  should  financial  difficulties 
threaten.  Have  I  made  myself  clear?  I  hope 
not,  for  what  I  have  said  in  this  paragraph  is 
solely  to  appease  a  sense  of  duty.  In  writing 
about  credits,  one  should  at  least  pretend  to 
consider  both  the  giver  and  the  receiver  of 
credit,  but  I  am  reluctant  to  offer  any  sugges- 
tions to  the  seeker  of  credit,  for  he  —  on  the 
average  —  already  has  decidedly  more  effective 
and  successful  methods  than  the  credit-giver. 
203 


SALESMANSHIP 

Yes,  there  is  a  science  of  credit-making  and 
it  is  practiced  —  up  to  a  certain  point  —  by 
a  good  many  credit  men.  There  are  several 
books  that  teach  the  rudiments  of  this  science. 
There  are  rules  for  estimating  the  liquidating 
value  of  various  kinds  of  merchandise  and 
accounts  and  bills  receivable.  There  are  rules 
for  determining  the  proper  ratio  of  debts  ow- 
ing by  the  credit  risk  to  debts  owing  to  him  — 
and  their  proper  relation  to  his  stock  on  hand 
and  cash  in  bank;  then  there  are  rules  for  de- 
termining the  proper  relation  to  all  of  this  of 
his  annual  business  —  annual  turnover  is  the 
neatest  way  to  put  it.  These  rules  are  good. 
They  can't  help  being  good,  because  they  are 
mostly  founded  on  statistics.  Everybody 
knows  that  anything  founded  on  statistics  is 
good. 

The  only  trouble  with  these  scientific  rules 
of  credit-making  is  that  when  you  commence 
to  apply  them  you  find  that,  outside  of  the 
Standard  Oil  Company  and  one  or  two  of 
the  larger  railway  systems,  no  corporation  is 
really  entitled  to  credit,  and  as  for  partner- 
204 


CREDIT-MAKING 

ships  and  individuals  —  well,  I'd  rather  not 
say,  for  fear  of  hurting  some  one's  feelings. 

There  you  are.  If  you  are  consistently  a 
scientific  credit  man,  you  can  extend  credit  to 
scarcely  any  one;  and  when  you  abandon  sci- 
entific methods  there  is  an  excuse  for  extend- 
ing credit  to  almost  every  one. 

As  practiced,  credit-making  is  n't  much  of 
a  science.  The  science  of  the  credit  men  who 
imagine  they  are  scientific  consists  mostly  in 
a  collection  of  hobbies,  prejudices,  and  super- 
stitions. Some  of  my  own,  for  example:  In 
dealing  with  individuals,  I  am  afraid  of  men 
with  lobeless  ears;  of  certain  classes  of  pro- 
fessional men;  of  all  owners  of  threshing- 
machines,  sawmills,  or  race-horses; of  all  takers 
of  tips;  and  of  nearly  all  persons  who  speak 
with  extreme  emphasis — or  naivete — or  unc- 
tion. Absurd,  you  say?  I  know  it.  And  since 
my  prejudices  against  individuals  in  a  credit 
sense  are  admittedly  absurd,  I  shall  not  at- 
tempt to  state  my  pet  antipathies  in  respect 
of  corporations  and  partnerships. 

The  scientific  credit  man  may  preserve  a 
205 


SALESMANSHIP 

few  of  his  hobbies  and  theories  and  apply  them 
now  and  then,  but  mostly  he  "strings  along 
with  the  bunch"  —  and  does  what  the  bunch 
does  when  any  of  his  credit  risks  come  fi- 
nancial croppers.  There  can't  be  any  real 
science  of  credit-making  any  more  than  there 
can  be  any  real  science  of  love-making.  Credit 
is  a  personal  thing.  So  is  love.  But  success  in 
either  love-making  or  credit-making  usually 
turns  on  extraneous  circumstances.  For  ex- 
ample, the  successful  Romeo  of  a  New  Eng- 
land village  might  become  a  wall-flower  in  a 
Western  mining-camp,  just  because  of  the  dif- 
ference in  supply  and  demand.  So  it  is  with 
credit  men.  If  your  house  is  selling  goods  that 
every  one  must  have,  it  is  one  thing  to  be 
credit  man,  while  it  is  quite  another  if  the 
goods  that  your  house  makes  or  sells  have 
to  be  crammed  down  the  throats  of  possible 
buyers  before  sales  can  be  effected. 

After  reading  this  chapter,  I  don't  expect 

you  to  know  any  more  than  you  did  before.  I 

expect  you  to  be  like  the  gentleman  who,  after 

following  the  races  for  a  year,  stated  that  he 

206 


CREDIT-MAKING 

"came  out  even;  I  started  with  nothing  and 
I've  got  nothing  left."  No  one  knows  enough 
about  credits  to  justify  him  in  trying  to  ex- 
plain what  he  knows.  Nevertheless,  it  is  per- 
haps wholesome  for  us  to  consider  how  little 
we  really  do  know.  That  is  good  for  us  al- 
ways, I  am  sure. 

Credit  came  into  existence  because  man- 
kind reached  a  point  where  one  man's  needs 
for  another  man's  goods  outstripped  his  ability 
to  make  instant  payment  in  things  of  value 
that  the  owner  of  the  goods  was  willing  to 
accept.  Then  came  the  adventures  of  com- 
merce; the  act  of  seeking  the  products  of  for- 
eign countries  in  exchange  for  the  overpro- 
duction of  home-grown  products.  The  men 
who  had  the  hardihood  to  fare  forth  on  this 
quest  needed  to  receive  credit  —  and  they 
did.  Upon  their  honesty  and  success  —  more 
particularly  upon  their  success  —  depended 
the  continuance  of  their  credit.  Death  and 
disaster  proved  the  need  of  evidence  of  these 
credit  transactions,  and  bits  of  writing  in  a 
certain  technical  form  came  to  play  a  useful 
207 


SALESMANSHIP 

part  in  the  mechanics  of  credit.  From  this  be- 
ginning has  been  built  up  the  credit  system 
that  partially  answers  our  modern  needs.  At 
best  it  is  a  flimsy  structure,  built  on  faith  and 
hope  and  perhaps  on  charity  too.  If  the  whole 
world  were  thrown  into  liquidation  to-mor- 
row, the  whole  world  would  be  insolvent  if  its 
assets  and  liabilities  were  measured  by  the 
ruthless  rules  that  guide  a  scientific  estimate  of 
credit  worthiness.  Hence,  there  are  few  good 
credit  risks  from  a  scientific  point  of  view. 
And  when  you  throw  away  the  science  of 
credits  —  as  you  must  —  what  is  left?  Noth- 
ing but  guessing. 

Credit  is  a  curious  thing;  sometimes  as  sensi- 
tive to  attack  as  a  woman's  reputation;  some- 
times as  steadfast  as  her  virtue;  sometimes, 
alas  —  but  why  say  that?  A  man's  credit  — 
like  a  woman's  virtue  —  is  what  it  may  turn 
out  to  be.  Who  can  tell?  But  however  doubt- 
ful and  distrustful  a  credit  man  may  be,  and 
to  some  extent  he  must  always  be  both,  he 
ought  to  be  unfailingly  a  good  fellow  —  the 
best  fellow,  the  most  tactful,  and  the  most 
208 


CREDIT-MAKING 

considerate  in  his  company's  whole  organiza- 
tion. He  should  never  send  out  form  letters 
such  as  the  young  matron's  husband  received. 
He  should  never  growl  like  a  watch-dog.  He 
should  always  remember  that  he  is  a  salesman 
—  a  salesman  of  "charge  accounts"  or  "lines 
of  credit."  And  he  should  also  realize  that  a 
bad  "credit"  is  simply  a  bad  sale  of  a  "debit." 


VIII 

THE   MANAGEMENT   OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

How  easy  it  is  to  say,"  I  am  managing  the 
traveling  force  of  So-and-So."  Easy  to  say 
and  sounds  good,  too,  but  it  is  n't  an  easy 
thing  to  do.  In  fact,  I  never  saw  any  one  really 
manage  a  force  of  traveling  men. 

One  of  the  reasons  why  it  is  hard  to  manage 
traveling  men  can  be  found  in  a  little  red  book 
called  the  "Official  Hotel  Guide."  This  book 
contains  the  names  of  most  of  the  hotels  in  the 
United  States,  and  a  majority  of  them  are 
unconscious  foes  to  efficiency  on  the  part  of 
their  guests  as  well  as  remarkable  examples  of 
inefficiency  themselves.  The  bad  cooking,  un- 
tidy housekeeping,  and  general  squalor  of  the 
average  commercial  hotel  make  it  difficult  for 
a  commercial  traveler  to  maintain  constantly 
the  fervid  enthusiasm  about  his  house,  his 
goods,  and  his  job  that  the  man  who  is  "man- 
aging" him  counts  on  when  figuring  out  the 
210 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

"propositions"  that  are  to  be  "put  across"  by 
the  traveler. 

A  traveling  man  leaves  the  home  office  with 
fresh  samples  in  his  sample  case,  crisp  new 
bank-notes  in  his  pocket  for  expenses,  and  the 
instructions  and  admonitions  of  the  sales 
manager  at  least  partially  remembered  and 
understood.  He  is  filled  with  determination  to 
make  this  trip  the  biggest  one  on  record.  He 
will  show  everybody  what  he  can  do.  Yes, 
sir,  he  feels  just  like  tearing  up  the  earth  this 
time.  He  is  brimming  over  with  enthusiasm, 
energy,  determination,  self-confidence  —  and 
anything  else  you  care  to  name  that  a  travel- 
ing man  should  brim  over  with  when  he  starts 
out  on  a  trip. 

"Tacks-ee-keb,  sir?"  Yes,  why  not  ride 
down  to  the  station  in  a  taxi?  It  won't  cost 
much  more  than  that  big  imported  cigar  the 
boss  gave  him  yesterday.  So  down  to  the  sta- 
tion he  goes  in  a  taxi. 

"Couldn't  get  a  lower  for  me,  couldn't 
you?  Well  I  guess  I'll  have  to  take  an  upper, 
then."  An  upper  berth  and  a  nice  bright  light 

211 


SALESMANSHIP 

right  over  his  head  until  midnight;  the  junc- 
tion at  five  in  the  morning  with  a  zealous 
porter  waking  him  at  four-fifteen;  connecting 
train  due  to  leave  the  junction  at  six;  saloons 
just  opening  up;  cold  gray  morning;  little 
drink  wouldn't  go  so  badly;  bad  habit  to 
drink  before  breakfast  —  but  then;  say,  that 
new  cocktail  the  sales  manager  ordered  at 
luncheon  yesterday  was  a  pretty  tasty  drink 
—  wonder  if  the  bartender  over  there  could 
mix  one;  exit  drummer;  so  much  for  the  first 
leg  of  the  trip. 

The  train  proves  to  be  late,  but  not  late 
enough  to  permit  breakfast  uptown  at  the 
junction.  It  finally  comes  along.  There  is  no 
dining-car,  for  this  kind  of  a  train  does  n't 
pamper  its  passengers.  The  candy  butcher 
would  think  you  were  trying  to  "kid"  him  if 
you  attempted  to  buy  a  twenty-five  cent  cigar. 
It's  just  a  plain  train  without  any  frills  on  it. 
Our  traveling  man  arrives  at  Brownsville  in 
a  drizzling  rain.  The  bus  bounces  him  up  to 
the  Central  Hotel  where  breakfast  has  nearly 
run  its  course.  The  members  of  "Within  the 
212 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

Law,  No.  13  Company"  are  the  only  guests 
left  in  the  dining-room.  The  leading  woman 
looks  at  him  disdainfully  and  remarks  to 
her  companion:  "These  drummer  dumps  are 
fierce,  ain't  they?  —  Did  you  taste  that  cof- 
fee; and  look  at  the  toast,  would  you  —  and 
the  butter  —  that  surely  must  be  goat-milk 
butter." 

Our  traveling  man  does  n't  hear  the  leading 
woman's  comment.  He  only  sees  her  —  and, 
as  he  slides  into  his  chair,  murmurs  to  Maggie, 
the  head  waitress,  "I  see  you've  got  some 
show  people,"  to  which  Maggie  replies,  wrin- 
kling her  nose  scornfully,  "Yes,  and  thank 
Heaven  they're  goin'  to  leave  on  the  eleven 
o'clock  train.  They're  something  fierce,  them 
show  people." 

It's  "fierce"  all  around.  The  leading  woman 
was  right  when  she  said  "drummer  dumps" 
are  fierce  —  at  least  she  was  right  about  some 
of  them.  On  the  other  hand,  Maggie  was 
right  about  show  people.  They  get  pretty 
fierce  when  they  go  against  a  fierce  drummer 
dump.  People  who  have  lived  most  of  their 
213 


SALESMANSHIP 

lives  at  actors'  boarding-houses  and  hotels 
that  print  on  the  hotel  stationery,  "Steam 
heat  in  every  room.  Special  rates  to  the  pro- 
fession," will  go  up  in  the  air  a  mile  when  they 
get  a  week  of  fair-to-medium,  pretty-much- 
on-the-average  commercial  hotels;  but  the 
poor  old  traveling  man  is  expected  to  take 
fifty-two  weeks  of  it,  if  need  be,  and  never 
make  a  murmur.  In  fact,  when  he  asks  for  a 
salary  raise,  the  sales  manager  is  mighty  apt 
to  say,  "And  you  must  not  forget  that  we  are 
paying  your  expenses.  You're  living  on  the 
fat  of  the  land  —  at  our  expense."  I  know 
sales  managers  say  that  and  believe  it,  for 
I've  said  it  myself.  It's  queer  how  much 
better  some  towns  look  on  the  map  than  they 
do  when  you  meet  them  face  to  face,  and  how 
much  better  some  hotels  look  on  the  pages  of 
the  "Hotel  Guide"  than  they  do  when  you 
pull  the  pen  out  of  the  potato  to  write  your 
name  in  the  guest-book  —  no,  I  mean  register 
your  name  under  the  vividly  colored  date  slip 
furnished  by  the  enterprising  manufacturer 
who  imagines  that  these  slips  are  bringing  his 
214 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

product  into  prominence.  I  know  he  is  enter- 
prising, but  I  can't  remember  his  name  or  his 
product.  Can  you? 

Enough  of  this :  Let  us  get  back  to  our  hero, 
by  this  time  laboriously  excavating  with  a 
cloudy  spoon  the  interior  of  a  spongy  orange. 
He  is  feeling  rather  seedy.  If  any  comparison 
can  be  drawn  between  a  small  orange  full  of 
large  seeds  and  a  traveling  man  who  feels  de- 
cidedly gone  to  seed,  he  is  the  seedier  of  the 
two.  He  feels,  and  rightly,  that  the  Junction 
bartender  did  not  make  that  cocktail  exactly 
as  it  was  made  at  the  sales  manager's  club. 
Instead  of  whetting  the  appetite,  as  any  well- 
concocted  cocktail  is  supposed  to  do,  this  par- 
ticular cocktail  is  exciting  premonitions  of 
an  untimely  headache.  The  lumpy  oatmeal 
seems  more  lumpy;  the  leathery  beefsteak, 
more  leathery;  and  the  muddy  coffee,  more 
muddy. 

Out  in   the   "office"   after  breakfast  he 

moodily    lights    a    cigar    and    momentarily 

pauses  to  examine  with  feigned  interest  an 

ammunition   manufacturer's   familiar   litho 

215 


SALESMANSHIP 

graph  of  a  sportsman  shooting  ducks,  and  a 
harvester  company's  equally  familiar  calendar 
illustrating  a  blonde  broiler  down  stage  in  an 
Old  Homestead  costume  against  a  back  drop 
that  depicts  a  wheat-field  and  a  binder,  with 
the  company's  name  on  the  binder  in  letters 
of  disproportionate  size.  He  then  moves  over 
to  a  shoe  manufacturer's  map  of  the  United 
States  and  discovers  the  interesting  geograph- 
ical fact  that  Brownsville  is  located  on  the 
right  eyebrow  of  the  shoe  company's  salesman 
for  this  particular  State. 

At  nine-thirty  he  starts  out  to  see  Smith, 
his  Brownsville  customer.  He  does  n't  feel 
quite  so  brisk  or  confident  or  enthusiastic  as 
he  did  the  day  before,  when  he  left  the  sales 
manager's  office.  Then,  his  territory  was  a 
map  containing  so  many  towns  and  so  much 
possible  business.  To-day,  it  is  merely  a  col- 
lection of  places  with  bad  hotels  and  worse 
railroad  connections.  Yesterday  Brownsville 
was  a  dot  on  the  map  and  a  possible  thousand- 
dollar  order.  To-day  it  is  an  ugly  country 
town  that  he  wants  to  leave  behind  him  as 
216 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

soon  as  possible.  Maybe  he  can  get  through 
with  Smith  in  time  to  get  away  on  the  eleven 
o'clock  train.  Smith  never  was  a  very  live 
wire,  and  there's  not  much  use  of  springing 
the  sales  manager's  new  scheme  on  him.  Of 
course,  it's  all  right  to  mention  the  scheme  to 
Smith,  but  hardly  worth  while  to  take  up 
much  time  with  it.  "I'll  get  his  order  for 
what  he  wants  and  get  out  at  eleven  o'clock, 
I  guess." 

Well,  he  made  the  eleven  o'clock  train  and 
had  a  game  of  pitch  with  three  other  salesmen. 
Nice  fellows  they  were  and  all  four  worked  the 
next  town  in  three  hours  and  got  out  of  it  to- 
gether on  the  four-fifteen  train.  Two  of  them 
had  intended  to  spend  a  little  more  time  with 
their  customers  and  wait  for  the  seven-thirty 
train,  but  it  did  seem  a  shame  to  break  up  the 
pitch  game.  That  night  they  had  a  real  sure- 
enough  pitch  game,  and  our  man  lost  seven 
dollars,  but  he  did  n't  care  much  about  the  loss 
until  the  next  morning  when  he  got  up  with 
a  slight  headache.  His  orders  for  the  previous 
day  had  n't  been  sent  in,  so  he  sat  down  be- 
217 


SALESMANSHIP 

fore  breakfast  and,  instead  of  the  compre- 
hensive reports  he  had  intended  to  send  the 
sales  manager,  wrote  briefly  as  follows:  "Was 
too  busy  last  night  to  send  in  my  daily  reports. 
Inclosed  find  orders  from  Smith  of  Browns- 
ville and  Jones  of  Newtown.  Best  I  could  do. 
They  would  n't  consider  your  new  scheme,  but 
I  will  try  it  on  everybody  just  as  you  said. 
Want  to  get  over  the  territory  as  rapidly  as 
possible  so  as  to  keep  ahead  of  Blank  &  Co.'s 
man.  Will  be  in  Summit  Sunday.  Change 
route  card  accordingly.  Have  n't  had  time  to 
make  up  those  new  reports  on  Brownsville 
and  Newtown.  As  you  know,  a  traveling  man 
does  n't  have  much  time  to  fill  out  reports, 
but  will  do  the  best  I  can." 

The  sales  manager  reads  the  letter  and  says 
to  himself,  "That  fellow's  a  hustler.  He's  not 
much  on  making  reports,  but  I  suppose  he's 
right:  a  traveling  man  does  n't  have  much 
time."  It's  rather  funny  how  sales  managers 
fall  for  that  "too-busy-to-make-reports"  idea, 
inasmuch  as  most  of  them  have  been  traveling 
men  themselves. 

218 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

Getting  back  to  our  hero  again:  Ten  days 
pass,  during  which,  by  sundry  economies, 
most  of  the  seven-dollar  loss  at  pitch  has  been 
absorbed  by  the  expense  account.  Scarcely 
anything  else  of  great  moment  has  occurred, 
unless  the  breaking-up  of  the  pitch-playing 
quartette  can  be  so  regarded.  In  a  couple  of 
towns  the  trains  ran  in  such  a  way  as  to  give 
our  traveling  man  a  good  deal  of  time  in  each 
place.  In  the  first  he  caught  up  on  his  reports. 
In  the  second,  having  nothing  better  to  do  and 
having  breakfasted  uncommonly  well  (good 
hotel  there),  he  tackled  his  customer  on  the 
sales  manager's  new  scheme.  It  took  all  morn- 
ing and  then  two  hours  more  after  luncheon 
to  do  it,  but  he  finally  put  the  scheme  over  — 
which  only  goes  to  show,  you  know,  that  some 
merchants  will  take  hold  of  a  sales  manager's 
schemes  and  some  won't. 

The  hotels  got  no  better:  same  way  about 
trains;  rotten  weather,  too.  Time  passed. 
Cosmopolis  for  the  third  Sunday.  Gee!  a 
traveling  man  leads  a  pretty  hard  life.  Well, 
anyway,  there's  always  a  good  bunch  Sun- 
219 


SALESMANSHIP 

claying  at  Cosmopolis;  wonder  if  that  plump 
little  brown-eyed  waitress  is  still  there;  she 
certainly  was  a  good  fellow. 

The  sales  manager's  new  scheme?  "Oh,  I 
put  that  over  with  one  fellow,  but  most  of  'em 
don't  seem  to  take  to  it  and  I  don't  press  'em 
very  hard.  The  fact  is,  for  the  last  two  or 
three  days  I  haven't  mentioned  it  to  the 
trade  at  all.  I'm  trying  to  get  over  my  terri- 
tory, you  know,  and  get  what  business  there 
is  in  sight.  Cosmopolis  for  Sunday?  Betchyer 
life." 

After  a  while  the  sales  manager,  back  in  the 
home  office,  takes  stock  of  his  pet  scheme.  He 
folds  up  the  papers  and  tucks  them  away. 
"The  boys  have  even  quit  referring  to  it  in 
their  reports,"  he  says  to  himself.  "I  suppose 
they  don't  want  to  rub  it  in  on  me.  That 
scheme  apparently  was  a  lemon.  Of  course, 
the  new  fellow  out  in  Iowa  is  doing  pretty  well 
with  it,  but  I  guess  his  territory  is  different 
from  the  rest.  I'll  let  him  go  along  as  he's 
doing  now,  but  as  far  as  the  other  boys  are 
concerned,  I  guess  I  can  count  on  them  to  get 
220 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

all  the  business  there  is  in  sight  without  any 
new  schemes." 

No,  I  'm  not  trying  to  be  funny  and  I  don't 
care  how  many  sales  managers  and  traveling 
salesmen  read  the  foregoing  and  say,  "Not 
me"  —  or  I.  No,  sir,  I  don't  care  what  they 
say.  I  know  that  human  nature,  country- 
hotels,  and  local  trains  have  wrecked  more 
good  sales  plans  than  you  can  shake  a  stick 
at. 

Manage  traveling  men?  Anybody  can 
make  a  traveling  man  call  his  laundry  by  some 
other  name  in  his  expense  account.  Anybody 
can  make  a  traveling  man  fill  out  route  cards 
and  send  them  in.  Anybody  can  stick  tacks 
in  a  map  and  do  the  other  things  that  tradi- 
tion ascribes  to  the  management  of  traveling 
men,  but  who  ever  really  managed  a  force  of 
traveling  men? 

I  have  always  liked  to  try  to  manage  travel- 
ers —  but  then  there  are  always  men  who  like 
to  play  a  hard  game.  I  believe  in  all  the  modern 
frills,  including  maps  and  tacks  and  geograph- 
ically arranged  card  files  with  significant 

221 


SALESMANSHIP 

colors  for  the  cards,  for  a  sales  manager  needs 
to  have  before  him  a  graphic  picture  of  his 
territory  just  as  a  general  needs  campaign 
maps  and  the  best  obtainable  information 
about  the  opposing  forces.  However,  as  they 
are  generally  used,  the  maps,  cards,  tacks, 
etc.,  of  a  modern  sales  department  probably 
do  not  yield  a  direct  return  commensurate 
with  the  cost  of  their  maintenance;  but  unless 
they  are  very  sadly  misused,  I  believe  they 
have  a  considerable  indirect  value.  For  ex- 
ample, a  map  system  properly  kept  up  is  a 
constant  accusation  of  the  sales  manager.  No 
sales  manager  or  sales  force  ever  works  a 
territory  the  way  it  should  be  worked;  that  is 
impossible,  for  perfection  is  never  attained  in 
any  sales  department;  but  when  business  is 
good,  sales  managers  are  prone  to  become  self- 
satisfied,  and  the  worst  thing  a  sales  manager 
can  do  is  to  become  satisfied  with  himself  and 
his  department.  If  the  true  conditions  are 
kept  constantly  before  him  in  graphic  form, 
no  sales  manager  can  ever  get  in  that  state  of 
mind.  Furthermore,  the  geographical  point 

222 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

of  view  must  be  constantly  maintained  if  a 
sales  manager  is  really  going  to  manage  sales 
and  not  let  sales  manage  him.  A  gratifying 
volume  of  business  does  not  necessarily  signify 
selling  efficiency,  but  an  accurate  knowledge 
of  the  weak  points  in  the  territory,  and  an 
intelligent  and  persistent  attack  on  those 
points  is  almost  certain  to  bring  about  in- 
creased sales.  Among  other  arguments  in 
favor  of  the  geographical  form  of  attack  is  the 
fact  that  traveling  salesmen  are  sometimes  in- 
clined to  avoid  the  towns  where  their  services 
are  needed  most  and  are  much  disposed  to 
underestimate  the  importance  of  small  towns, 
particularly  small  towns  that  have  bad  hotels 
or  poor  train  service. 

There  was  once  a  time  when  a  certain 
reaper  company  had  very  decidedly  the  lion's 
share  of  the  reaper  trade.  Their  binders  and 
mowers  were  popular  with  the  farmers.  They 
were  lenient  in  their  collection  methods.  They 
had  the  pick  of  the  implement  dealers  for  their 
agents.  They  seemed  as  strongly  intrenched 
as  a  manufacturer  of  a  competitive  article 
223 


SALESMANSHIP 

could  be.  Their  branch  managers  were  the 
overlords  of  the  implement  business.  Their 
traveling  salesmen  were  envied  by  the  trav- 
elers of  all  the  other  reaper  concerns.  Perhaps 
a  part  of  this  envy  was  occasioned  by  the  fact 
that  most  of  this  particular  reaper  company's 
dealers  were  located  in  fair-sized  towns  — 
"electric-light  towns"  as  they  were  known 
twenty  years  ago.  A  man  who  traveled  for 
this  reaper  concern  could  on  the  average  stop 
at  better  hotels  and  ride  on  better  trains  than 
the  men  who  worked  for  the  other  reaper  com- 
panies. Since  this  company  had  in  most  cases 
the  best  dealer  in  each  of  the  best  towns,  the 
other  companies  had  to  take  second  choice  in 
those  towns.  One  of  the  other  companies 
finally  decided  that  it  would  rather  have  the 
best  dealer  in  a  poor  town  than  the  worst 
dealer  in  a  good  town.  So  the  other  company 
commenced  to  specialize  on  the  small  towns, 
and  ultimately  it  had  the  electric-light  towns 
hedged  about  with  crossroads  dealers.  In  a 
good  many  ways  these  crossroads  dealers  did 
not  compare  favorably  with  the  dealers  in  the 
224 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

electric-light  towns,  but  they  covered  the  ter- 
ritory so  thoroughly  that  their  efforts  gradually 
brought  results,  and  when  both  companies 
merged  some  ten  or  twelve  years  ago,  each 
company  was  doing  about  the  same  amount 
of  business. 

The  sales  problems  of  a  reaper  manufac- 
turer are,  of  course,  very  different  from  those 
of  a  manufacturer  of  high-priced  confectionery 
or  expensive  corsets,  but  the  geographical  at- 
tack has  a  suitable  adaptation  for  every  sell- 
ing problem. 

The  geographical  attack  requires  the  rout- 
ing of  traveling  men  —  not  necessarily  pre- 
scribing in  what  order  nor  upon  what  days 
they  shall  visit  certain  towns,  but  at  least  in- 
structing them  as  to  what  towns  they  are  to 
visit.  Some  sales  managers  refrain  from  doing 
this  and  say,  in  effect,  "Our  traveling  men 
know  more  about  their  respective  territories 
than  we  do."  This  is  a  damaging  admission 
for  a  sales  manager  to  make.  While  a  travel- 
ing man  may  know  more  about  some  things 
in  his  territory  than  the  sales  manager  can 
225 


SALESMANSHIP 

know  or  needs  to  know,  no  sales  manager 
should  permit  himself  to  know  less  than  his 
traveling  men  about  the  important  territorial 
facts.  One  reason  why  a  manufacturer  who 
operates  through  branch  offices  is  usually  able 
to  show  a  higher  degree  of  sales  efficiency  than 
the  manufacturer  who  does  not,  is  because 
a  branch  manager,  without  conscious  effort, 
acquires  a  knowledge  of  his  territory  that  a 
general  sales  manager  does  not  get  without  the 
most  persistent  effort,  nor  retain  and  make 
useful  without  the  painstaking  compilation 
and  maintenance  of  convenient  and  graphic 
records. 

But  why,  in  an  article  about  managing 
traveling  men,  should  I  talk  about  geographi- 
cal attack  and  the  mechanics  of  sales  manage- 
ment, when  the  principal  problem  is  a  human 
problem  —  a  very  human  problem?  The  aver- 
age human  mind  is  not  very  ready  in  its  grasp 
of  the  thoughts  that  emanate  from  another 
mind.  Even  when  I  agree  with  your  views  and 
indorse  your  plans,  I  probably  do  not  more 
than  half  comprehend  the  underlying  rea- 
226 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

sons  that  have  influenced  them.  Accordingly, 
when  I  attempt  to  cany  out  your  plans,  I  fall 
far  short  of  doing  and  saying  all  that  you  had 
in  mind.  I  may  omit  to  do  or  say  the  very 
thing  that  would  have  made  your  scheme  a 
great  success. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  not  more  than  one 
traveling  man  in  ten  fully  understands  what 
his  house  is  trying  to  accomplish.  This  is 
partly  the  fault  of  the  traveling  man  and 
partly  the  fault  of  the  sales  manager  —  mostly 
the  sales  manager's  fault,  I  think.  Of  course, 
the  traveling  man  knows  that  his  house  wants 
him  "to  go  out  and  get  the  business";  but  he 
rarely  has  that  sympathetic  understanding  of 
the  sales  manager's  selling  schemes  that  would 
enable  him  to  put  in  those  finer  touches  of 
salesmanship  that  correspond  —  for  example 
—  with  the  suppleness  of  a  champion  billiard- 
ist's  wrists  or  the  delicate  sensitiveness  of  a 
premier  jockey's  hands.  Speaking  of  billiards 
In  comparison  with  salesmanship,  the  atti- 
tude of  the  average  traveling  man  toward 
salesmanship  is  a  good  deal  like  my  own  atti- 
227 


SALESMANSHIP 

tude  toward  billiards.  I  know  that  three  balls 
are  used  in  the  game  and  that  if  I  make  one  hit 
each  of  the  other  two,  I  thereby  score  a  point; 
but  I  have  never  taken  the  trouble  to  study 
either  angle  or  stroke,  and  I  play  no  better 
game  to-day  than  I  did  ten  years  ago.  The 
average  traveling  salesman  takes  the  same 
pains  to  comprehend  the  true  inwardness  of 
his  sales  manager's  plans  as  I  have  taken  to 
master  the  true  inwardness  of  billiards.  This 
is  partly  because  scarcely  anybody  can  ex- 
actly understand  the  ideas  of  anybody  else,  but 
principally  because  scarcely  anybody  really 
cares  very  much  about  the  ideas  of  anybody 
else. 

When  you  explain  your  ideas  to  me,  you 
must  do  one  of  three  things  to  get  me  to  make 
an  intelligent  and  sincere  effort  to  carry  them 
out.  You  must  either  make  me  think  they  are 
my  own  ideas,  or  you  must  intimidate  me,  or 
you  must  be  very,  very  convincing  —  more 
convincing  than  I  have  ever  yet  known  any 
sales  manager  to  be. 

Now  we  have  arrived  at  the  kernel  of  the 
228 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

matter,  and  if  there  is  any  value  in  this  article, 
here  it  is:  Sales  managers  issue  instructions 
and  counsel  with  the  fatuous  belief  that  such 
instructions  and  counsel  are  studied,  pondered 
on,  understood,  and  heartily  indorsed  by  the 
traveling  men  who  receive  them.  Not  once  in 
ten  times  is  this  the  case.  A  traveling  man 
may  take  any  one  of  a  dozen  different  views 
when  he  receives  instructions  from  his  man- 
ager. Here  are  some  of  them:  (i)  "I'm  al- 
ways willing  to  follow  instructions  from  the 
house,  but  I  know  these  won't  work  in  my 
territory  and  I'll  soon  convince  the  house  of 
that."  (2)  "What  does  this  fellow  know  of 
conditions  in  my  territory?  This  may  be  all 
right  in  other  territories,  but  not  in  mine." 
(3)  "I  guess  this  guy  thinks  I  don't  know  how 
to  handle  my  trade  —  wants  to  tell  me  just 
how  to  do  it."  (4)  "What  do  you  know  about 
that!  —  trying  to  tell  me  —  me  who  was  in 
this  business  before  he  was  out  of  grammar 
school!"  (5)  "I'm  going  to  quit — if  I  can 
get  another  job."  (6)  "That's  what  I  Ve  been 
doing  right  along  —  not  just  that  way,  but 
229 


SALESMANSHIP 

the  same  thing;  thinks  he  can  tell  me  some- 
thing, does  he?" 

These  are  some  of  the  things  traveling  men 
say  when  they  get  your  letters  of  instruction, 
Mr.  Sales  Manager.  Now  and  then  a  new  man 
or  some  chap  who  has  taken  a  fancy  to  you 
will  say,  "That's  a  good  idea,"  but  you  must 
figure  that  he  probably  does  n't  more  than 
half-understand  what  your  idea  is,  and  if  he 
does,  his  enthusiasm  and  interest  are  not 
likely  to  survive  a  week  of  bad  hotels  and  bad 
train  service. 

When  I  am  managing  traveling  salesmen  I 
try  to  remember  that  I  am  managing  a  bunch 
of  the  finest  fellows  in  the  world,  who  are  up 
against  a  mighty  tough  game.  I  try  to  re- 
member that  they  know  a  lot  about  the  busi- 
ness —  more  about  some  phases  of  it  than  I 
do.  I  am  willing  to  let  them  help  me  form  the 
sales  policies  of  the  company.  I  like  to  get 
them  all  together  and  "choose  up"  sides  like 
an  old-fashioned  "spell-down"  contest.  One 
side  represents  the  customers'  side  —  the  buy- 
ing side;  the  other  side  represents  our  side  — 
230 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

the  selling  side.  Then  we  go  to  work  and  col- 
laborate on  a  complete  selling  plan.  The  fel- 
lows on  the  buyers'  side  try  to  spike  or  blow 
up  the  guns  of  the  fellows  on  the  selling  side. 
Sometimes  we  spend  a  whole  day  on  a  single 
point,  and  before  we  finally  decide  what  it  is 
best  to  do  and  say  on  that  point,  every  one  — 
both  the  buyers  and  sellers  —  must  agree  that 
the  thing  we  have  decided  on  is  the  very  best 
thing  to  do  and  say.  Point  by  point  we  work 
up  a  complete  sales  plan  with  the  exact  detail 
and  dialogue  of  the  approach  and  all  of  the 
subsequent  steps  of  a  sale.  When  it  is  finished, 
each  of  the  traveling  men  solemnly  subscribes 
to  the  fact  that  it  is  his  plan  —  not  mine  — 
and  fares  forth  to  slay  the  trade  with  a  weapon 
of  his  own  fashioning.  Even  so,  I  have  heard 
that  some  of  the  solemn  subscribers  later  went 
back  on  their  solemn  oaths  and  said  it  was  all 
—  well,  you  know  what  kind  of  foolishness. 
However,  that  does  n't  matter,  for  I  have  used 
this  method  for  several  years  and,  on  the 
whole,  it  has  been  successful;  although,  after 
an  interval,  country  hotels  and  local  trains  will 
231 


SALESMANSHIP 

reduce  almost  to  zero  the  effectiveness  of  any 
selling  plan  that  can  be  devised. 

With  reference  to  the  second  method  of 
getting  traveling  men  to  embrace  unreservedly 
a  sales  manager's  schemes,  namely,  scaring 
them  into  it,  I  must  confess  that  I  have  never 
tried  that  plan.  When  a  traveling  man  doesn't 
do  what  you  want  him  to  do  and  persists  in 
his  obstinacy,  he  ought  to  be  dismissed,  and 
his  dismissal  probably  has  a  good  effect  on  his 
fellows,  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  bring 
myself  to  dismiss  any  one  in  a  way  to  accom- 
plish that  effect  in  the  fullest  degree,  which  is 
probably  one  reason  why  I  am  not  a  very  good 
sales  manager. 

As  to  being  convincing  with  a  traveling 
man  —  well,  if  you  can  be  that,  you  don't 
need  to  read  this  or  any  other  article  on  the 
management  of  traveling  men,  and  probably 
have  n't. 

I  am  practically  through.  I  could  talk 
about  expense  accounts,  I  suppose,  but  that  is 
a  delicate  subject.  It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  that 
most  of  the  men  who  now  sit  at  sales  mana- 

232 


MANAGEMENT  OF  TRAVELING  MEN 

agers'  desks  are  men  whose  expense  accounts 
in  their  traveling  days  were  extremely  moder- 
ate. I  don't  know  of  any  sales  manager  who 
was  ever  an  expense-account  grafter  —  or  who 
even  tried  to  "break  even"  when  he  was  on 
the  road.  I  know  I  was  n't  smart  enough  to 
do  it,  and  when  I  was  called  into  the  home 
office  to  take  a  position  there,  I  actually  didn't 
know  enough  to  charge  up  my  railroad  and 
sleeping-car  fare.  I  thought  my  job  ended 
while  I  was  on  the  road,  and  that  my  new  job 
did  n't  commence  until  1  arrived  at  the  home 
office.  Can  you  beat  it? 

I  have  written  quite  a  lot  about  the  man- 
agement of  traveling  men.  There  is  a  lot  more 
I  should  like  to  write,  but  it  scarcely  has  a 
place  here.  I  believe  in  letters  of  a  certain 
sort  ahead  of  the  travelers  and  letters  of  an- 
other sort  —  to  which  they  contribute  —  be- 
hind them,  but  that  again  gets  into  the  me- 
chanics of  the  game,  so  I  shall  have  to  confess 
that  the  foregoing  is  all  I  know  about  the 
broad  principles  of  the  very  difficult  science 
of  really  and  truly  managing  traveling  men  — 
233 


SALESMANSHIP 

except  one  thing:  go  easy  on  the  "bawl  outs," 
and  if  possible,  temper  with  some  praise  every 
letter  of  criticism;  if  that  isn't  possible,  it's 
pretty  nearly  time  for  something  stronger  than 
criticism. 


THE  END 


Ifttoetfi&e 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U  .  S  .  A 


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